Excerpt

Big history can also be summarized as providing an overview of the rise and demise of complexity in all its forms and manifestations ever since the beginning of the Universe. If we want to pursue this approach to Big History, we need a theoretical framework that facilitates us to do so. In this article, I propose such a scheme based on energy flows through matter that are needed for complexity to emerge, and often also to continue to exist, within certain favorable boundaries (“Goldilocks Circumstances”).

Introduction

My field of study deals with the very long-range approach to all of history, from the beginning of the Universe until life on Earth today, increasingly known as Big History. This term was coined by one of its modern pioneers, the historian David Christian, who is also a contributor to this book.

Big History can also be summarized as providing an overview of the rise and demise of complexity in all its forms and manifestations ever since the beginning of the Universe. If we want to pursue this approach to Big History, we need a theoretical framework that facilitates us to do so. Over the past 15 years I have been reflecting on how to develop such a general theory of Big History. In 2001, I found great inspiration in the ground-breaking book Cosmic Evolution: the Rise of Complexity in Nature by US astrophysicist Eric Chaisson [9]. However, I had a nagging feeling that something was lacking. In 2003, after my wife Gina asked me, “How do you explain all of this?” I saw in a flash what was needed to supplement Chaisson’s approach and achieve a new synthesis. In my article “How Big History Works” of 2005 [35], the first contours of this theory were sketched. My book Big History and the Future of Humanity, published in 2010 [36], presents a more detailed and improved version of this argument. In this chapter, its key aspects are summarized.

In addition to complexity, my theoretical scheme is based on two familiar physical terms, namely, matter and energy. All forms of complexity in Big History have consisted of matter, while they have all required an energy flow for their emergence. Our solar system, for instance, is thought to have emerged as a result of the energy flow that was released by an exploding star, a supernova, which had reached the end of its stellar life. This cosmic blast would have compressed a large dust cloud, which subsequently contracted under the influence of gravity to form our solar system. Also, the emergence of life must have required an energy source of some sort, perhaps the energy released by undersea volcanoes, while all the forms of complexity that humans have produced could not have been made, either, without energy flows.

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