Session Abstract

Big History is a new and growing field that breaks the traditional boundaries between disciplines and attempts to avoid the pitfalls of periodization. Big History courses typically begin with the Big Bang, and take a broad approach leading to modern times and into the future, seeking to place the human race in its full context. Can we hope to gain a comprehensive understanding of human history if we limit ourselves to a few thousand years, and confine ourselves to subsections of a single planet? Events millions and even billions of years ago and light years away can and do have immediate significance for human history. The Big Bang, Evolution, and Plate Tectonics are over-arching theories that bind the fields of Physics, Biology and Geology respectively, but there is no single theory that comes close to such levels of acceptance among historians. Walter Alvarez (Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley , best known for “The Alvarez Hypothesis”, now generally accepted, that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a massive meteorite) describes Big History as “bridging the intellectual chasm between humanities and sciences.”

The first “Big History” course was introduced by David Christian in 1998 at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia, and the approach has been steadily growing in influence and appeal. At last count, Big History is now taught in at least 32 institutions in 7 countries. Fred Spier, Senior Lecturer in Big History at the University of Amsterdam, has pioneered the field in Europe. The Dominican University of California is now requiring a Big History course of all its first year students. The International Big History Association (IBHA) was formed in 2010, and its first conference will convene in Grand Rapids Michigan in July 2012.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who describes David Christian’s Learning Company version of his Big History course as, “the course that I think is most phenomenal, which I wish everybody would watch,” has given a substantial grant to help with the foundation of the IBHA, and is involved with various other initiatives to promote wider interest in Big History. A History Channel documentary on Big History is in production and will screen in the Fall of 2011.

This panel seeks to introduce this growing field to a wider audience of professional historians, and to discuss the intellectual justifications for a wider approach. Can Big History really be described as belonging to the field of History, and can viable research be conducted in it? Craig Benjamin introduces the intellectual and historical background of the Big History approach, and discusses the way in which Big History has only become viable because of scientific advances in the last few decades. Cameron Gibelyou, a doctoral student in physics, discusses the merits and validity of Big History from a scientist’s point of view, and Jonathan Markley concludes by discussing the application of the Big History approach to narrower topics, such as particular plants, elements, or cosmic events.