Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is a 1998 book by the biologist E. O.

Wilson, in which the

author discusses methods that have been used to unite the sciences and might in the future unite
them with the humanities. Wilson uses the term consilience to describe the synthesis of knowledge
from different specialized fields of human endeavor.

Definition of consilience
This book defines consilience as "Literally a 'jumping together' of knowledge by the linking of facts
and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation."

Symbolic language allows us to talk about things that are not here. It vastly
increases the range of what we can communicate.
Provide a reflective response of 500 words on how Big History: Connecting Knowledge has
enhanced your understanding of the course objectives:

 Identifying connections across disciplines

 Explaining the complexity of our world
 Appreciating the challenges of the future
BIG HISTORY FRAMEWORK: David Christian - What is Big History?
ZOOMING IN: Richard Menary - What is the relationship between
historical & scientific explanation?
ZOOMING IN: Jenny Duke-Yonge - How do we decide what to believe?

And this question of justification, of what justifies a belief

and what makes it reasonable to accept a certain belief, is one of the central questions in
epistemology.
Knowledge - Testing Claims:
Glossary
Epistemology: The area of philosophy concerned with belief and knowledge
Fallibilism: The view in Epistemology that beliefs can be justified without being certain
Relativism: The view that truth is not absolute, but relative to an individual or culture, so what is true
for one person may be false for another
Skepticism: As an epistemological thesis, skepticism is the view that we cannot have knowledge.
Skepticism can be global (i.e. we cannot have any knowledge) or restricted to a particular area (e.g.
we can‟t have knowledge about the external world; or we can‟t have knowledge about the past)

BIG HISTORY FRAMEWORK: David Christian - How did our Universe get
more complex?

Linking the First Three Tresholds

BIG HISTORY FRAMEWORK: David Baker - Big History, Critical

Thinking, & Transdisciplinarity

Big History, Critical Thinking, Transdisciplinarity

LATEST SUBMISSION GRADE

100%
1.Question 1
What happened in the 1950s that made the development of the new field of Big History possible?
The discovery of CBR
The theory of general relativity
The discovery of the redshift
Development of new radiometric dating systems
2.Question 2
Which of the following is NOT one of the first three thresholds of rising complexity?
Creation of the Solar System
Emergence of the First Stars
Stellar creation of new chemical elements
Appearance of the Universe

3.Question 3
Big History is different to other origin stories in human history because:
It attempts to describe the creation of the Universe
It attempts to describe the origin of life
It is the first global and scientific origin story
It is used to make sense of the world around us
4.Question 4
Increasing complexity is a “unifying theme” of 13.8 billion years of history because:
It shows how more complex things in the universe have emerged despite the second law of
thermodynamics
It shows that the second law of thermodynamics suggests the universe should get simpler
It shows how life first emerged in the solar system
It shows how the universe is perfectly organized

5.Question 5
It is important to use claims testers because:
If a claim of knowledge is assessed using the claim testers it must be true
They help us decide whether a claim of knowledge is well-justified, even if we can’t be absolutely
certain it is true
They help us determine the truth of a claim of knowledge ensuring we won’t believe anything that
is false
If the claim testers are applied to a claim of knowledge further investigation is not required

6.Question 6
The four claim testers (intuition, authority, logic, and evidence) must be applied in order.

True False

7.Question 7
In the first split second after the Big Bang, which of these fundamental forces emerged?

Gravity
Electromagnetism
Strong nuclear force
Weak nuclear force
All of the above
Accretion: The gradual accumulation of more matter, by electrostatic attraction and impacts,
resulting in larger and larger planetary bodies in the formation of the solar system...The act of adding
to a growing protoplanet (or equivalent body) by the addition of meteoritic material, via
bombardment.

Crust: The thin outer layer of the Earth, mostly composed of oxygen and silicon, it constitutes less
than 1% of the Earth‟s total volume.

Differentiation: The process in the formation of the Earth during which heavier elements tended to
sink to the bottom, making a metallic core, and lighter elements tended to float toward the top. Other
planets and planetesimals that reach a certain size also differentiate, provided they are massive
enough for the pressure to heat up the centre and that in its initial stages the body is molten....

The process of separation of different minerals/fluids of differing density, eg. the segregation of the
core from the rocky mantle of Earth.

Electrostatic Attraction: Slow moving electric charges can attract objects and make them adhere
to each other. This was crucial to the accretion of dust in the formation of the solar system and
continued when celestial objects began to grow to be much larger in size, with much more violent
impacts resulting.

Exoplanet: A planet orbiting a star that is not our Sun.

Mantle: Below the thin cooled crust of the Earth is the molten mantel where the geology runs at
such a temperature that it functions like a viscous fluid. It makes up 85% of the Earth‟s volume.

Metallic Core: Made up of primarily heavy elements that sank to the core during differentiation, like
iron and nickel, it constitutes 15% of the Earth‟s volume and can reach temperatures up to 4000
degrees Celsius.

Molecules: Groups of atoms bonded together, representing the smallest fundamental unit of a
chemical compound that can take part in a chemical reaction.

Planetesimals: A celestial object orbiting a star that is smaller than a typical planet, and over 1km in
size. They accumulated during the birth of the solar system to form the 8 planets, and many
planetesimals still remain in the solar system today.
Plate Tectonics: a theory explaining the structure of the earth's crust and many associated
phenomena as resulting from the interaction of rigid lithospheric plates which move slowly over the
underlying mantle.

Rocky/gassy planets: The rocky planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The gassy planets
are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. T-tauri winds blasted out from the sun at the beginning of
the solar system sent a lot of the lighter gasses out of the closer orbits of the solar system to be
captured by the gas giants.

Spectroscope: an apparatus for producing and recording radiation and light spectra for
examination, dispersed according to wave length.

Timeline
13.8 billion years ago: The Big Bang

10 to the power of -43 seconds after the Big Bang: "Planck time"; the universe is smaller than a
"Planck length", the smallest length that has any physical meaning; we can say nothing with any
certainty about what happened before this point.

10 to the power of -33 to -32 seconds after the Big Bang: Inflation where the universe expands
faster than the speed of light from much smaller than an atom to a much larger size, by the end of
the process cooling to near absolute zero before energy fields decay and heat the Universe up again
as it expands relatively more slowly.

10 to the power of -10 to -6 seconds after the Big Bang: Quarks and anti-quarks are created and
annihilate each other; surviving quarks form the basis for protons and neutrons. Surviving quarks
represent 1/billionth of the previous mass of quarks and antiquarks.

1-10 seconds after the Big Bang: Electron-positron pairs form and annihilate (leaving again,
perhaps 1/billionth of the previous amount of electrons and positrons).

3 minutes after the Big Bang: The Universe cools down enough to allow hydrogen and helium to
form from protons and neutrons. Atomic nuclei begin to form

380,000 years after the Big Bang: Hydrogen and helium atoms are able to form as Universe cools
and becomes electrically neutral

560 million years after the Big Bang: Stars begin to form
8-10 billion years ago: The formation of our galaxy, the Milky Way, from the mergers of several
other galaxies.

4.567 billion years ago: The solar system begins to form

4.57 billion years ago: Gas cloud condenses, contracts, and increases rotation to form
protoplanetary disk.

4.5682 billion years ago: Oldest grains in the solar system form (calcium-aluminium inclusions, and
some chrondrites).

+10 million years – Gas giants had largely formed, probably much closer to the Sun than at present.

>+10 million years – Solar wind clears out much of the gas disk, ending growth by gas accretion.

c.4.5 billion years ago: Jupiter migrates inwards, preventing planet formation in the asteroid belt,
and limiting the supply of material to Mars. It then enters into a resonance with Saturn, and moves to
current orbit.

4.567 billion years ago: Formation of the solar system

4.54 billion years ago: Accretion of planetesimals into the Earth

4.52 billion years ago: Impact of "Theia" and the formation of the Moon

4.45 billion years ago: Terrestrial planets had largely formed by continual accretion of rocky
protoplanets, and formed metal cores. Moon forming impact.

4.4 billion years ago: Oldest preserved zircon grains.

4.2 billion years ago: Oldest rocks on Earth.

4 billion years ago: Torrential downpours, cooling of the Earth's crust, and formation of the first
oceans

3.9 billion years ago: A 2:1 resonance between Jupiter and Saturn causes Neptune to leap outside
Uranus‟s orbit, and they both migrate into the outer solar system, causing a massive disruption in the
Kuiper and precipitating the late-heavy bombardment.

3.8 billion years ago: Chemical signatures of the earliest life on Earth
3.8-3.9 billion years ago: Late heavy bombardment observed in the lunar record.

3.5 billion years ago: Oldest fossil record for life on Earth. Fossil evidence for the earliest single-
cell life

2.5 billion years ago: Oxygenation of the atmosphere due to photosynthesizers

1 billion-750 million years ago: Formation of Rodinia

300-100 million years ago: Formation and dissolution of Pangaea

David Christian - Why is Threshold 4 significant?

Solar System

Inclusions: Tiny mineral grains, or fluids, entrapped within a larger (and younger) mineral, that
preserve a prior history to the formation of the host grain.

Proto-solar nebula: The rotating cloud of gas and dust which condensed to form the Sun, and the
planets.

Magnetic Field: From the Earth's deep interior, caused by electrical currents, it extends outward
and protects the Earth from charged particles of solar wind that would otherwise strip Earth of its
ozone layer, exposing the surface to radiation.

Eratosthenes: (276-195 BCE) Greek mathematician who calculated the circumference of the Earth.

ZOOMING IN: Dick Flood - What is our Earth's history and how do we
know it?

average surface

there must be some very dense rocks deep within the Earth and we wondered what they could be.
Top Five Extinctions
Ordovician-silurian Extinction: 440 million years ago Small marine organisms died out.

Devonian Extinction: 365 million years ago Many tropical marine species went extinct.

Permian-triassic Extinction: 250 million years ago The largest mass extinction event in
Earth's history affected a range of species, including many vertebrates.

Triassic-jurassic Extinction: 210 million years ago The extinction of other vertebrate species
on land allowed dinosaurs to flourish.

Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction: 65 Million Years Ago

The astronomer who in 1929 looked at the redshift and the distances to other galaxies and found the
universe was expanding was named:
Fred Hoyle Edwin Hubble Paul Dirac Albert Einstein

2.Question 2
Cosmic background radiation, or cosmic microwave background, one of the foremost pieces of
evidence for the Big Bang Theory, was emitted:

3.5 million years after the Big Bang

3 minutes after the Big Bang
350 million years after the Big Bang
380,000 years after the Big Bang
3.Question 3
Which of the following does NOT ly state a difference between a population one star and a
population two star?

Population one stars are less luminous than population two stars
Population one stars are hotter stars, and population two stars are cooler stars
Population two stars are metal poor, and population one stars are metal rich
Population two stars are older stars, and population one stars are younger stars
4.Question 4
How many naturally occurring elements are there?

12 92 116 205
5.Question 5
How long after the Big Bang did the Epoch of Recombination happen?
 Several minutes Several hours Several hundred years
Several hundred thousand years
6.Question 6
What improvement did Henry Moseley make to the periodic table?

He predicted Beryllium (Be) has a valency of +2, not the +3 that was commonly thought at the
time, thus establishing the structure of the table
He added Lanthanides and Actinides to the periodic table
He developed the Law of Octaves that described the 8 fold periodicity of the elements
He showed that the atomic numbers of the elements defined their position on the periodic table,
not their atomic weight
7.Question 7
The formation of planets in an early solar system is known as the process of:

Accretion Distillation Convection Differentiation

8.Question 8
In differentiation, most of the Earth‟s iron and nickel flowed to the:

Mantle Crust Atmosphere Core

9.Question 9
Earth's Moon formed:

Via spinning off the Earth, leaving the Pacific Ocean Indentation behind
As a captured protoplanet that entered Earth's orbit
Due to a giant impact that blasted off a chunk of the early Earth
A close encounter with a larger body gravitationally ripping off part of the Earth
10.Question 10
Jupiter's large size is due to:

Forming beyond the "frost-line" of the early solar system

The cannibalism of a comet population
The gravitational effect of Saturn on its orbit
The fact it was a failed star that never reached fusion
11.Question 11
Continental drift was a model proposed by Alfred Wegener that eventually evolved into the plate
tectonic model:
 True False
12.Question 12
The layer that forms 80% of the volume of the Earth is the:

Crust Heavy Core Mantle Pseudosphere

Timeline
Humankind:
Timeline
c.65-67 million years ago: The mammalian radiation follows the Cretaceous extinction event, and
mammals quickly evolve to fill the empty niches.

c.7 million years ago: The Last Common Ancestor between chimpanzees and humans.

c.3.5 million years ago: Evolution of Australopithecus and bipedalism.

c.2.8 million years ago: Evolution of Homo habilis.

c.2.1 million years ago: Evolution of Homo erectus/ergaster.

c.100,000-200,000 years ago: Evolution of “anatomically modern” Homo sapiens

c.70,000-100,000 years ago: Blombos cave evidence of symbolic thought

c.100,000 years ago: Human migration into southwest and possibly south Asia.

c.64,000 years ago: The second major wave of human migration out of Africa, and the first wave
that eventually reaches across the world.

c.10,000 years ago: The first human communities start using agriculture

The Evolutionary EpicTOTAL POINTS 15

1.Question 1
The three general characteristics that are shared by forms of life are:
Metabolism, photosynthesis, reproduction
Adaptation, reproduction, metabolism
Metabolism, photosynthesis, adaptation
Differentiation, reproduction, adaptation
2.Question 2
Which of the following is NOT a crucial chemical and fundamental building block for life?
Deoxyribonucleic acids Ribonucleic acids Carbolic acids Amino acids
3.Question 3
The first chemical evidence for living things occurs approximately 3.8 billion years ago. Life was not
possible before this because:
This is when the Earth first formed
This is when the bombardment of the Earth by meteorites stopped
There was not enough time for life to evolve before this
This is when the first fossil animals are found
4.Question 4
Radiometric ages for rocks have only been available to scientists for:
150 years 300 years 1250 years 60 years
5.Question 5
Which of the following were key observations that led Darwin to formulate his ideas about evolution?
Individuals often produce more offspring than the environment's resources can support
Individuals are not identical, but vary in characteristics
Some variations improve reproduction under the current conditions
Heredity ensures resemblance between parent and offspring
All of the above
6.Question 6
What percentage of species has become extinct over geological time?
15% 99% 65% 50%
7.Question 7
The Cambrian “small shelly fossils” represent:
Some of the earliest animal skeletons
A wide range of separate species
Isolated bits from larger more complex skeletons
All of the above
8.Question 8
One thing that all primates have in common is:
Tailless Bipedalism Carnivorous Forward facing eyes
9.Question 9
Humanity’s closest surviving relatives are:
Orangutans Macaques Chimpanzees Gibbons
10.Question 10
"Anatomically modern” humans are estimated to have emerged approximately:
 2.1 million years ago 10,000 years ago 3.5 million years ago 200,000 years ago
11.Question 11
Collective learning is the ability of a species to accumulate more information with each passing
generation than is lost by the next.
True False
12.Question 12
When a 40% complete skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis was found in 1974, one of the most
surprising things about the skeleton was that:
her skull suggested that she was quite cognitively advanced, with a large brain.
her wrists and upper arms showed that she was well adapted to knuckle walking, that is, walking on
all four limbs.
her lower skeleton showed she was adapted to walk upright.
she was nearly the same size as an adult male of the same species.
13.Question 13
Scientific theories:
Are guesses about how things happen
Are coherent explanations with substantial evidence
Are hypotheses
Have not yet become established “facts”
All of the above
14.Question 14
One of the key cognitive differences between humans and chimpanzees is that:
humans are more competitive, such as in the way that we reproduce through sexual selection.
humans have much more well developed abilities to imitate and learn by imitation.
humans use tools and chimpanzees do not
chimpanzees do not have complex social lives, such as cooperation or alliance-building.
15.Question 15
Over time, hominin ancestors became increasingly less sexually dimorphic.
True False

Life in Palaeolithic Africa:

Glossary

Archaeology: the study of the past human societies and their environment through the systematic
recovery and analysis of material culture or physical remains.
Artefact: any object that was made by past people. For example, an arrowhead or a clay pot.

Australopithecus: an extinct genus of the hominid family that lived in Africa from about three to one
million years ago. The name means “southern ape.”

Bifacial handaxe or biface: They are large stone cobbles which have been roughly worked on both
sides (called "bifacially worked") into an oval or triangular shape. They are pointed, or at least
relatively pointy on one end, and some of those pointy ends are quite tapered. Those chipped stone
artefacts represent the oldest and longest-used formally shaped working tool ever used by hominins.

Homo sapiens: the specific name of modern man; the only extant species of the genus Homo. He is
characterized by dependence upon language and the creation and use of complex tools. Archaic
forms of Homo sapiens probably evolved around 300,000 years ago or earlier in Africa, and
anatomically modern fossils are known from about 100,000 years ago.

Homo erectus: an extinct large-brained hominid of the genus Homo (H. erectus) that is known from
fossil remains in Africa, Europe, and Asia, is estimated to have flourished from 1.6 million years ago
to 250,000 years ago. Homo erectus thought to be the first hominid to master fire, and is believed to
be the immediate ancestor of modern man (Homo sapiens).

Homo habilis: an extinct species of upright East African hominid, dated as being from about 1.5
million to more than 2 million years old and proposed as an early form of Homo leading to modern
humans. Homo habilis thought to be the first hominid to use stone tools.

Nomadic: a word, derived from nomads, describing people who move about from place to place
(usually within a defined territory) in search of food instead of building permanent shelters and
settling in villages.

Palaeolithic: the longest period of human history (roughly more than 99% of human technological
history).

Prehistory: the time before written history.

Rock art: ancient or prehistoric drawing, painting, or similar work on stone. Rock art includes
pictographs (drawings or paintings), petroglyphs (carvings or inscriptions), engravings (incised
motifs) and geoglyphs (ground drawings).

Stone tool: A flake that is often modified by further chipping or flaking.

Life in Palaeolithic Africa:

Timeline

3 million-10,000 years ago: The Palaeolithic

3 million-120,000 years ago: Lower Paleolithic (or Early Stone Age), the oldest part of the
Paleolithic Age with the emergence of the hand ax; ended about 120,000 years ago

1.3 million years ago: first bifaces

400,000 years ago: control of fire

200,000 years ago: Modern humans (Homo Sapiens) emerged in Africa

120,000-50,000 years ago: Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Stone Age)

100,000 years ago: first burials

50,000-10,000 years ago: Upper Paleolithic ( or Later Stone Age) the time period during which only
modern Homo sapiens was known to have existed

Cliodynamics is a transdisciplinary area of research integrating historical

macrosociology, cultural and social evolution, economic history/cliometrics,
mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the construction
and analysis of historical databases. Cliodynamics: The Journal of
Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution is an international, peer-reviewed,
open-access journal that publishes original articles advancing the state of
theoretical knowledge in this transdisciplinary area. In the broadest sense, this
theoretical knowledge includes general principles that explain the
functioning, dynamics, and evolution of historical societies and
specific models, usually formulated as mathematical equations or computer
algorithms. Cliodynamics also has empirical content that deals with
discovering general historical patterns, determining empirical adequacy of key
assumptions made by models, and testing theoretical predictions with data
from actual historical societies. A mature, or „developed theory‟ thus integrates
models with data; the main goal of Cliodynamics is to facilitate progress
towards such theory in history and cultural evolution.
This journal is available for sharing and reuse under a Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International License which means that all content is
freely available without charge to users and their institutions. Users are
allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full
texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the
publisher or the author.
Cliodynamics is a member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
and Scopus

dftba = don't forget to be awesome

Human History
TOTAL POINTS 10
1.Question 1
What is the most characteristic material evidence of the Palaeolithic?
Sickles Pottery Metal tools Stone tools
2.Question 2
It is very difficult to discern what Paleolithic thoughts and spiritual beliefs were because:
Humans had not yet evolved the ability for abstract thought and symbolism
Hunter-gatherer belief systems tended to be simple and straightforward
Humans had not yet developed a way of producing written documents
All of the above
3.Question 3
Humans have been foragers for approximately how much of their history?
20% 50% 95% 65%
4.Question 4
In terms of world history, a “Garden of Eden” is:
A place where food resources are initially abundant enough to allow foragers to settle more
permanently
A place where overpopulation cannot occur
A place where states are likely to arise directly from foraging communities
A place where food resources are initially scarce but can be cultivated by early farmers
5.Question 5
At the source of the Nile near Lake Victoria
Between the Euphrates and the Tigris
In the Indus valley
In ancient China
6.Question 6
The earliest evidence for writing dates back to:
 c.2200 BCE c.5000 BCE c.3500 BCE c.10,000 BCE
7.Question 7
What was the least intentional exchange resulting from the silk roads?
Playing cards
Weapons
Opium
Disease
8.Question 8
What religious tradition inspired the construction of Angkor Wat?
Buddhism
Christianity
Hinduism
Islam
9.Question 9
What are the four world zones?
Afro-Eurasia, Australasia, North America, South America
Africa, Eurasia, Australasia, Americas
Afro-Eurasia, North America, South America, Oceania
Afro-Eurasia, Australasia, the Pacific, Americas
10.Question 10
What is NOT a characteristic of an "agrarian civilization"?
There is enough agricultural surplus to support cities
Most wealth comes from heavy manufacturing
It is supported by the resources gathered by peasant farmers
There is a intricate system of taxation

Previous mass extinctions

Geological history includes many periods when species have died in large
numbers. In each of the following, more than half the Earth’s species
disappeared:

1 End-Ordovician, 443 million years ago.

This coincides with very rapid glaciation; sea level fell by more than 100 metres,
devastating shallow marine ecosystems; less than a million years later, there was
a second wave of extinctions as ice melted, sea level rose rapidly, and oceans
became oxygen-depleted.

2 Late Devonian, c 360 million years ago.

A messy prolonged event, again hitting life in shallow seas very hard, and an
extinction that was probably due to climate change.

3 Permian-Triassic mass extinction, c 250 million years ago.

The greatest of all, ‘The Great Dying’ of more than 95% of species, is strongly
linked with massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia that caused, among other
effects, a brief savage episode of global warming.

4 Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction, c 200 million years ago.

This has been linked with another huge outburst of volcanism.

5 Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction 65 million years ago.

This killed off the dinosaurs and much else; an asteroid impact on Mexico
probably did the damage, but the world’s ecosystem may have been weakened by
volcanic outbursts in what is now India.
Transdisciplinary Thinking: The mode of thought that concerns multiple disciplines interacting all
at once to investigate a particular question or problem that cannot be relegated to one discipline.
Transdisciplinary thinking differs from interdisciplinary thinking in that it is not just a method of
invoking a handful of closely related disciplines to address a problem, but rather a disparate array of
some of the most diverse disciplines from across the academic spectrum, almost to the point that the
relevance of one discipline over another to the problem is indistinguishable.
ModernityTOTAL POINTS 8
1.Question 1
The first nation to industrialize in the modern era was:
The United States The Netherlands Germany Britain
2.Question 2
The Industrial Revolution started:
1500 CE 1900 CE 1200 CE 1750 CE
3.Question 3
One of the major changes of the Industrial Revolution was:
The transition from top-lying to fossil fuels
The transition from fossil to top-lying fuels
The beginning of a process known as "creative descent"
The beginning of a process known as "creative ascent"
4.Question 4
Interpreting the "new and old" stories of the Industrial Revolution is a historical debate between
which of the following two broad groups?
The natural and social sciences
The right wing and the left wing
The culturalists and materialists
The economists and humanists
5.Question 5
The Opium War was important for globalization because:
It closed Japan to American trade
It allowed China to defy the pressure to open up
It opened China up to British trade
It allowed Russia to dominate Central Asia
6.Question 6
Which is an example of globalization?
Homo sapiens migrating across the Bering Strait
Portuguese circumnavigating the globe
Chinese manufactured goods being sold in North America
All of the above
7.Question 7
Threshold 8 is:
Life Foraging Agriculture Modernity
8.Question 8
Approximately how many times the amount of resources needed to survive does the average human
use today?
2 4 10 100
The Future
1.Question 1
Which is NOT one of David Christian's rules for contemplating the future?
You can't use history to contemplate the future
We need to look at long term trends
There are no guarantees
Predictions are the best we can do
2.Question 2
David Christian says the ‘near future’ next 50 to 100 years are most important to humans when
contemplating the future because:
50 or 100 years is probably all our species has left
No one can predict what is going to happen on the timescale of millions or billions of years
It is a time period where some people today will still be alive
That time period is the easiest to predict
3.
Question 3
We've known how greenhouse gases warm the Earth for approximately:
10 years 20 years 50 years 200 years.
Question 4
We are already seeing the devastating effects of climate change, and since the Industrial Revolution the
average global temperature has risen by:
20 degrees C 5 degrees C 10 degrees C 1 degree C
5.
Question 5
Once the Sun runs out of hydrogen for fuel it will:
Shrink into a white dwarf and the Earth will freeze
Start burning carbon as fuel
Explode in a supernova
Bloat up and engulf the Earth
6.
Question 6
Because Dark Energy appears to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe:
The Universe is likely to expand until all the stars have flickered out and matter decays back into
energy
The Universe is likely to collapse in on itself in a "Big Crunch"
We are likely to crash into another Universe like Andromeda
We'll have enough energy to defy the second law of thermodynamics
Provide a reflective response of 500 words on how Big History: Connecting Knowledge has
enhanced your understanding of the course objectives:

 Identifying connections across disciplines

 Explaining the complexity of our world
 Appreciating the challenges of the future

Please address all three aspects in your response.

Big Bang: The current theory that states our Universe began 13.8 billion years ago at a point much
smaller than an atom, trillions upon trillions of degrees in temperature, with intense density, and has
expanded outward ever since. All time, space, matter and energy that exists today, existed then.
Currently physics calculations can only get as far back as 10 to the power of -43 seconds after the
Big Bang, the smallest fraction of a second that has any physical meaning.

Complexity: A certain degree of order, connection, structure of many and diverse building blocks,
that benefits from a flow of free energy through its system, keeping ahead of total thermodynamic
equilibrium or the equal distribution of energy so no new work can be done. Over 13.8 billion years,
complex systems have moved further and further away from thermodynamic equilibrium, from stars,
to planets, to living organisms, to cultural systems.

Emergence: The concept whereby new phenomena emerge in a Universe that operate in ways that
are worth more than the sum of its parts – e.g. life operates in ways different than the organic
chemicals that created it. Two major schools of emergence exist: weak emergence, which posits that
these new processes emerge from the building blocks that came before it, and strong emergence
which posits that these new processes cannot be explained by simply examining what came before.
Most scientists today would adhere to weak emergence.

Free Energy: The energy flowing through a system – e.g. a star, organism, or piece of technology –
that is unimpeded , can produce work, and flow into other connected systems. Generally speaking,
more complex systems tend to have a greater density of free energy for every amount of mass.
Hence an organism has a much higher density of free energy than a star.

Goldilocks conditions: A rough concept that discusses the conditions required for a new form of
complexity to emerge, whether it be the birth of stars or the origins of life. The Goldilocks conditions
for a form of complexity differs widely from entity to entity, but most forms of complexity can only
emerge within a very small range of conditions.

Gradients: In the context of Big History, the unequal distribution of energy that allows flow for
energy, work, and for complexity to arise. Without gradients of energy, the Universe would have an
equal distribution of energy, would be in thermodynamic equilibrium, and no complexity would arise.
Origin Story: A narrative constructed either by evidence or traditional myth that explains the origin
of the world around them, the origins of various plants and animals, and the emergence of people.
All human cultures past and present have an origin story of some sort, and Big History has the
potential to be the first modern, global, and scientific origin story.

Radioactive decay/breakdown: An unstable atom loses energy and while it is impossible to predict
when a single atom will decay, a large collection of atoms can be calculated to have a certain period
where half of them decay, or “half-life”. Using various types of materials, radioactive decay allows
scientists to determine, quite accurately, the half-life of a lot of different materials and thus determine
ages for very old objects.

Second Law of Thermodynamics: One of the most concrete laws of science, which states that the
Universe has a consistent amount of energy, and some energy is lost in any operation, ultimately
leading to the rise of entropy and the inevitable Heat Death of matter in the Universe. It implies the
Universe is destined to get simpler and simpler, even though pockets of the Universe still enjoy
concentrations of energy, energy flow, and therefore complexity.

Thresholds: The major phase-shifts of the Big History of 13.8 billion years, classifying a point in the
grand narrative where a new form of complexity emerges. The 8 major thresholds are: the beginning
of the Universe, the first stars, new chemical elements, the origin of planets and the solar system,
the beginning of life, the evolution of collective learning, the emergence of agriculture, and the
beginning of the modern revolution. Theoretically, the future deals with threshold 9 where another
phase of complexity is expected to arise.

Universe: The totality of all matter, energy, and space-time in existence. The observable Universe is
currently thought to be approximately 93 billion light years across. Outside the observable Universe
there could still be more things, including multiple universes and inflationary space, according to
some theorists.

The course has provided me with a vast array of concepts from many study disciplines which draw
together theories of the origin of the universe providing a history and time line of its origin through to
now, present day society on planet earth.

The course outlines the phenomenon of increasing complexity from the time of origin of the
universe starting with a „big bang‟ theory after which simple particles conglomerated to form
elemental hydrogen and helium. As these coagulated over billions of years to develop into stars and
galaxies with increasing complexity, the universe has been expanding. Various physics,
cosmology, astronomy, chemistry and geology disciplines have provided research to validate 13.8
billion years ago as the origin of this event. I learned that aggregations of energy when synchronized
with times of benign conditions produced new forms of matter. Prof Christian describes this
as ’goldilocks’ conditions.
The course continued on covering the development of the universe and our solar system as a part
of that system to the point where at about 3.8 billion years ago on earth conditions came together
where amino acids which had formed in shallow seas on earth, and the energy of our sun, and the
atmosphere surrounding earth. The product of this was a simple singled cell of life. Disciplines such
as biology, geology, and palaeontology give support to these ideas.

I learned that at 2.5 billion years ago more complex organisms were using solar energy to create
their own energy material. In „goldilocks‟ conditions this pushed up the levels of environmental
oxygen, favouring some organisms. Around 1.5 billion years ago came a major change in the way
organisms reproduced and sexual reproduction had evolved. By 1 billion years ago multicellular
organisms evolved. Disciplines such as geology, palaeontology, biology, chemistry provided
research support.

At each of these developments „goldilocks‟ conditions gave rise to new forms and increasing
complexity. Animals moved out of the seas onto land. Plants evolved on land, myriad organisms
evolved, persisted or died out. Darwin‟s theory of evolution is introduced. By 65 million years
ago, mammals expanded into the niches created by the extinction of the dinosaurs. From this a line
of primates evolved, some eventually walking on their hind legs. Here are the ancestors of Homo
sapiens. Disciplines of biology, geology, palaeontology, history, anthropology give reference.

Distributions across the continents, migrations of humans are traced. Development of communities
to states, foraging, to agrarian, to industrial societies shows the upward spiralling increase in
population, use of energy sources and the consequent production of green house gases.The
changes wrought by our expanding human population on the planet have been confirmed. A
2degreesC rise is predicted by 2100 if human intervention does not occur.

Prof Christian says the generational near future is hard to predict whether global society will act or
not. Distant cosmological future ultimately will decline into simpler forms to extinction.

What I have learned from this course is that from the origins of the universe to the development of
life on planet earth, future activity by humans on a global scale will decide the future of life on earth.
Threshold One: The origin of the universe with all the matter and energy in it that would form the
building blocks for a subsequent stages of complexity.

Threshold Two: The formation of the first stars from clouds of hydrogen and helium gas, making
pockets of the Universe less homogenous and providing energy gradients through which energy
could flow and greater complexity could be formed.

Threshold Three: The death of the first massive stars and the creation of heavier elements in the
periodic table that would form the building blocks for planets, organisms, and cultural technology.

Threshold 4: The Solar System

Threshold 5: Emergence of Life
THRESHOLD 6: Humankind

THRESHOLD 7: Agriculture

THRESHOLD 8: Connecting the world zones

Threshold 9: The hypothetical threshold of rising complexity that concerns the future. Most
discussions and investigations of Threshold 9 concern what that rise of complexity may be. Usually,
but not universally, that new threshold concerns humans and another level of cultural evolution or
technological advancement that builds on prior thresholds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History#Complexity,_energy,_thresholds

https://theconversation.com/how-big-history-can-save-the-world-100815

The Big History course focuses on three essential skills and three key concepts that we want
students to master. The essential skills are: thinking across scales, integrating multiple
disciplines, and making and testing claims. The core concepts are: thresholds, collective
learning, and origin stories.

https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/arts-humanities-partners/big-history-project

How has the Universe and life within it grown more complex over the past 13.8 billion
years?
How do we know what we know about the past?
How can we judge claims about the past?
Why does what we “know” change over time?
 How does what happened during the early days of the Universe, the Solar System, and
the Earth shape what we are experiencing today?
Thinking across scales
Big History encourages students to think across scales, from the massive expanse of the
Universe to the smallest of atoms.
Students need to think across scale in terms of both time and distance. This helps us to
frame our experience at the level of the personal, family, community, national human and
geologic experience.

Integrating multiple disciplines

Big History encourages the use of interdisciplinary thinking and methodologies. Students
should integrate the insights of multiple disciplines when analyzing and drawing conclusions
about historical information, including social, physical, and natural sciences.
Students should become aware of a range of scholarly disciplines and understand the
types of questions they ask, the types of conclusions that they draw, and the types of evidence
they use to support their findings.
Thresholds
Big History looks at the Universe as a series of moments called thresholds. These
moments are characterized by a set of ingredients and just-right „Goldilocks Conditions‟ that
result in new forms of complexity. Big History tells the story of the Universe by using these
moments to describe Universal change.
The use of thresholds is unique to Big History, but it provides a helpful means of analysis
that can be applied to more traditional historical contexts and other disciplines.
Core Concepts
Collective learning
Collective learning is the human ability to share, preserve, and build knowledge over
time. In Big History, this is the defining characteristic that separates humans from other species.

Origin stories
There are numerous explanations of the origins of our planet as well as the Universe as
a whole. Since the time of the earliest humans, we have struggled to make sense of our world.
Big History represents one point of view, and is considered a modern, scientific origin story.
The Big History origin story is incomplete and will continue to evolve as science and
scholarly inquiry continue to advance.
Course Learning Outcomes
1. Explain how thresholds of increasing complexity, differing scales of time and space, claim
testing, and collective learning help us understand historical, current, and future events as
part of a larger narrative.
2. Integrate perspectives from multiple disciplines to create, defend, and evaluate the history of
the Universe and Universal change.
3. Deepen an understanding of key historical and scientific concepts and facts; use these in
constructing explanations.
4. Engage in meaningful scientific inquiry and historical investigations by being able to
hypothesize, form researchable questions, conduct research, revise one‟s thinking, and
present findings that are well-supported by scientific and historical evidence.
5. Critically evaluate, analyze, and synthesize primary and secondary historical, scientific, and
technical texts to form well crafted and carefully supported written and oral arguments.
6. Communicate arguments to a variety of audiences to support claims through analysis of
substantive texts and topics; use valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence
through individual or shared writing, speaking, and other formats.
7. Locate and understand how our own place, our community‟s place, and humanity as a
whole fit into and impact Big History‟s narrative,.
8. Engage in historical analysis using the theories and practices from multiple disciplines,
toward an integrated, interdisciplinary understanding of the history of the Universe.
Part 1: Formations and Early Life
Unit 1: What Is Big History?
Driving Question: Why do we look at things from far away and close up?
1. Define thresholds of increasing complexity, origin stories, and scale. (CO1)
2. Understand that Big History is a modern, science-based origin story that draws on many
different types of knowledge. (CO2, CO8)
3. Understand how you fit into the Big History narrative, using the concept of “thresholds” to
frame your past, present, and future, as well as the history of the Universe. (CO1, CO7)
4. Understand what disciplines are and consider how the viewpoints of many different scholars
can be integrated for a better understanding of a topic. (CO2, CO8)
Unit 2: The Big Bang
Driving Question: How and why do individuals change their minds?
1. Explain the basics of the Big Bang theory and the primary evidence that supports this theory. (CO1,
CO3,
CO6)
2. Using evidence from texts, explain why views of the Universe have changed over time and the roles
that
scientists played in shaping our understanding of the origin of the Universe. (CO3, CO5)
3. Understand how to use claim testing to evaluate a claim or resource. (CO1, CO3, CO5, CO6)
Unit 3: Stars and Elements
Driving Question: How can looking at the same information from different perspectives pave the way for
progress?
1. Describe how stars form. (CO3, CO5)
2. Explain what happens in the life of a star and explain what happens when a star dies. (CO1, CO3, CO5)
3. Explain how the death of stars results in the creation of heavier elements. (CO1, CO3)
4. Explain why the formation of stars and the emergence of elements are so important in our world.
(CO3, CO4, CO7)
5. Understand what scholars from multiple disciplines know about a topic and the questions they can
ask to
understand the topic from an integrated perspective. (CO2, CO5, CO8)
Unit 4: Our Solar System and Earth
Driving Question: How and why do theories become generally accepted?
1. Explain why planets are more complex than stars. (CO1, CO3)
2. Use evidence to explain how the Earth and its atmosphere developed and changed over time. (CO4,
CO5,
CO6, CO8)
3. Explain the basic mechanisms and key pieces of evidence for plate tectonics, and how plate tectonics
impacts life on Earth. (CO3, CO4, CO5, CO6), (CO2)
4. Explain why geology is important to understanding the history of the Earth. (CO2, CO8)
5. Understand how geologists can work with scientists and historians from other disciplines to form a
deeper
understanding of the history of the Earth. (CO2, CO8)
Unit 5: Life
Driving Question: How are we still evolving?
1. Describe the conditions that made it possible for life to emerge on Earth. (CO1, CO3)
2. Explain the differences between life and nonlife. (CO3)
3. Describe the major events in the development of life on Earth and explain what is meant by the term
biosphere. (CO3, CO5)
4. Use evidence to explain adaptation and evolution, including Darwin’s theory of natural selection and
DNA.
(CO4, CO5, CO6)
TEACHER MATERIALS
BIG
Part 2: Humans
Unit 6: Early Humans
Driving Question: What makes humans different from other species?
1. Describe human evolution, using evidence and connection to other species of mammals.
(CO3, CO4, CO5)
2. Explain whether or not symbolic language makes humans different. (CO4, CO5, CO6, CO8)
3. Describe how early humans lived. (CO3, CO5)
4. Explain collective learning. (CO1, CO3)
5. Understand what scholars from multiple disciplines know about a topic and the questions
they can ask to gain an understanding of the topic from an integrated perspective. (CO2,
CO5, CO8)

Unit 7: Agriculture and Civilization

Driving Question: Was farming an improvement over foraging?
1. Define agriculture and describe where it emerged. (CO3, CO5)
2. Identify the features of agrarian civilizations. (CO3, CO5)
3. Understand the similarities and differences between the lifestyles of hunter-gatherers and
farmers. (CO3, CO5, CO6)
4. Describe how early civilizations formed and their key features. (CO2, CO3, CO6)
5. Understand what scholars from multiple disciplines know about agriculture and civilization
and the information each field offers to your overall understanding. (CO2, CO5, CO8)

Unit 8: Expansion and Interconnection

Driving Question: What are the positive and negative impacts of interconnection?
1. Analyze what propelled the expansion and interconnection of agrarian civilizations. (CO2,
CO3, CO5)
2. Investigate the implications of interconnected societies and regions by looking at how
commerce has spread. (CO2, CO3, CO5, CO8)
3. Explain how new networks of exchange accelerated collective learning and innovation.
(CO1, CO3, CO5,
Unit 9: Acceleration
Driving Question: To what extent has the Modern Revolution been a positive or a negative
force?
1. Describe accelerating global change and the factors that describe it. (CO3, CO5, CO6, CO8)
2. Understand the key features that define the Anthropocene. (CO2, CO3, CO5, CO6, CO7,
CO8)
3. Describe how economies have developed and changed since the Industrial Revolution.
(CO2, CO3, CO4, CO5, CO8)
Unit 10: The Future
Driving Question: What’s the next threshold?
1. Explain the Big History story and its defining features and patterns. (CO1, CO2, CO3, CO4,
CO7, CO8)
2. Identify important human and environmental issues that affect the future of our species and
the biosphere. (CO2, CO3, CO4, CO6, CO7, CO8)
3. Propose a vision of the future based on new understandings of the past. (CO4, CO6, CO7,
CO8)
11

Through this course Big History: Connecting Knowledge I witnessed the transdisciplinary thinking
at work. Findings from a variety and most diverse science disciplines, are integrated to synthesize a
story, which is of a large scale in terms of time and space. This story is about the origin and
evolution of the observable Universe and life; of course, humankind having its particular role as
dominant species. And it is a story with an open end.