Big History

Big History is an interdisciplinary account of the past that connects the evolution of the universe, Earth, life, and human societies. It uses insights from natural and social sciences to trace how complexity emerged over cosmic time.

Big Bang: The rapid expansion of the universe from an early hot, dense state, beginning about 13.8 billion years ago. This threshold begins the cosmic timeline Big History traces.
Energy: A conserved physical quantity that can be transferred or transformed to perform work or produce change. Energy availability is used to explain why new forms of complexity became possible.
David Christian: An Australian historian who developed and popularized Big History as an interdisciplinary course and framework. His teaching and writing helped establish the field’s modern form.
Big History Project: An educational program offering a free interdisciplinary curriculum developed by David Christian and colleagues. It translates Big History’s framework into lessons for secondary education.
Stellar nucleosynthesis: The formation of chemical elements through nuclear reactions inside stars and stellar explosions. It explains how stars produced the elements needed for planets and life.
Entropy: A thermodynamic quantity that measures the dispersal of energy and the number of microscopic arrangements compatible with a system’s state. Local complexity develops within a universe whose overall entropy increases.
Fred Spier: A Dutch historian and anthropologist known for developing a framework of Big History around energy flows and complexity. His account emphasizes energy conditions behind successive thresholds.
Cosmology: The scientific study of the universe’s origin, structure, evolution, and large-scale properties. Cosmology supplies the early chapters and evidence for the cosmic timeline.
Earth: The third planet from the Sun, formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Earth provides the planetary setting for the emergence of life and humanity.
Complexity: A property of systems whose interacting parts produce organized patterns or behavior not reducible to individual parts. Big History tracks the emergence and transformation of complex systems.

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