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# Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Volume 2)

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Review: A Profound Thesis - David Christian, a trained historian, is one of the leading proponents of the relatively new concept of Big History, which I view as a sea-change in the way humans will begin to view not only the world but our place in it and what we might expect to come in the future. His work presents a truly monumental and profound thesis and a drastically new framework for where humankind fits into the universe. Of the broad variety of works I’ve read in the past several decades, it is simply one of the most interesting and cohesive theses I’ve come across, and I highly and unreservedly recommend it to everyone I know. I’d put it on par or above works like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist among others for its broad impact on how I now view the world. For scientists and researchers it has the potential to be the philosophical equivalent of The Bible and in fact, like many religious texts, it is in effect a modern day “creation myth,” albeit one with a scientific underpinning. Christian’s work was initially brought to my attention by an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Jeffrey R. Young in which he mentioned that Bill Gates was a big fan of Christian’s work and had recommended it himself at a TED conference. (Gates is now also a financial supporter of Christian’s Big History Project.) I myself was aware of the Learning Company’s generally excellent coursework offerings and within a few weeks got an audio copy of the course of forty-eight lectures to listen to on my daily commute. I’ve now devoured both his rather large text on the subject as well as a lecture series he created for a course on the subject. Below are brief reviews of the two works.The magnum written opus Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History is an interesting change of reference from a historical perspective combining the disciplines of physics, cosmology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, microbiology, evolutionary theory, archaeology, politics, religion, economics, sociology, and history into one big area of contiguous study based upon much larger timescales than those traditionally taken in the study of historical time periods. Though it takes pieces from many disciplines, it provides for an interesting, fresh, and much needed perspective on who humans are and their place in not only the world, but the entire universe. By looking at history from a much broader viewpoint (billions of years versus the more common decades or even just a few centuries) one comes away with a drastically different perspective on the universe and life. I’d highly recommend this to any general reader as early as they can find time to read through it, particularly because it provides such an excellent base for a variety of disciplines thereby better framing their future studies. I wish I had been able to read this book in the ninth or tenth grade or certainly at the latest by my freshman year in college – alas the general conception of the topic itself didn’t exist until after I had graduated from university. Although I have significant backgrounds in most, if not all, of the disciplines which comprise the tapestry of big history, the background included in the book is more than adequate to give the general reader the requisite introductions to these subjects to make big history a coherent subject on its own. This could be an extremely fundamental and life-changing book for common summer reading programs of incoming college freshman. If I could, I would make it required reading for all students at the high school level. Fortunately Bill Gates and others are helping to fund David Christian’s work to help introduce it more broadly at the high school and other educational levels. Within David Christian’s opus, there is also a collection of audio lectures produced by The Learning Company as part of their Great Courses series which I listened to as well. The collection of forty-eight lectures is entitled Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity (Great Courses, Course No. 8050). It provides a much quicker philosophical overview of the subject and doesn’t delve as deeply into the individual disciplines as the text does, but still provides a very cohesive presentation of the overall thesis. In fact, for me, the introduction to the topic was much better in these audio lectures than it was in the written book. Christian’s lecture style is fantastic and even better than his already excellent writing style. "Because of the scale on which we look at the past, you should not expect to find in it many of the familiar details, names, and personalities that you’ll find in other types of historical teaching and writing. For example, the French Revolution and the Renaissance will barely get a mention. They’ll zoom past in a blur. You’ll barely see them. Instead, what we’re going to see are some less familiar aspects of the past. … We’ll be looking, above all, for the very large patterns, the shape of the past." --David Christian In the audio lectures Christian highlights eight major thresholds which he uses as a framework by which to view the 13.4 billion years of history which the Universe has presently traversed. Then within those he uses the conceptualization of disparities in power/energy as the major driving forces/factors in history in a unique and enlightening way which provides a wealth of perspective on almost every topic (scientific or historical) one can consider. This allows one to see parallels and connections between seemingly disparate topics like the creations of stars and the first building of cities or how the big bang is similar to the invention of agriculture. I can easily say that David Christian’s works on big history are some of the most influential works I’ve ever come across – and having experienced them, I can never see our universe in the same naive way again. For those interested in taking a short and immediate look at Christian’s work, I can recommend his Ted Talk “The History of Our World in 18 Minutes” which only begins to scratch the surface of his much deeper and profound thesis: Given how profound the topic of big history is, I’m sure I’ll be writing about and referring to it often.
Review: Must have book, encyclopaedia of our world, our universe and our reason for being here. - There are gaps in our knowledge of the world and its beginnings and possible endings, but they are getting smaller as our perspectives get larger. This is a big book about the biggest questions we still have and the answers that are still being discovered and delivers the most comprehensive and easily readable account of where we are now that I have read to date. The references and reading lists offered as the voyage of discovery continues are invaluable and comprehensive. David Christian has captured a way of delivering and explaining what we know and what we might yet know of our history which propels us into the future with truth and understanding at our side and wonder in front of us. This is a great read and a fantastic adventure.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| ASIN  | 0520271440 |
| Best Sellers Rank | #76,351 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #66 in Cosmology (Books) #745 in Nature & Ecology (Books) #1,199 in World History (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (192) |
| Dimensions  | 6 x 1.7 x 9 inches |
| Edition  | Second Edition, With a New Preface |
| ISBN-10  | 9780520271449 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0520271449 |
| Item Weight  | 2 pounds |
| Language  | English |
| Part of series  | California World History Library |
| Print length  | 672 pages |
| Publication date  | October 3, 2011 |
| Publisher  | University of California Press |

## Images

![Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Volume 2) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61xpPd2zDoL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Profound Thesis
*by C***H on October 24, 2016*

David Christian, a trained historian, is one of the leading proponents of the relatively new concept of Big History, which I view as a sea-change in the way humans will begin to view not only the world but our place in it and what we might expect to come in the future. His work presents a truly monumental and profound thesis and a drastically new framework for where humankind fits into the universe. Of the broad variety of works I’ve read in the past several decades, it is simply one of the most interesting and cohesive theses I’ve come across, and I highly and unreservedly recommend it to everyone I know. I’d put it on par or above works like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist among others for its broad impact on how I now view the world. For scientists and researchers it has the potential to be the philosophical equivalent of The Bible and in fact, like many religious texts, it is in effect a modern day “creation myth,” albeit one with a scientific underpinning. Christian’s work was initially brought to my attention by an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Jeffrey R. Young in which he mentioned that Bill Gates was a big fan of Christian’s work and had recommended it himself at a TED conference. (Gates is now also a financial supporter of Christian’s Big History Project.) I myself was aware of the Learning Company’s generally excellent coursework offerings and within a few weeks got an audio copy of the course of forty-eight lectures to listen to on my daily commute. I’ve now devoured both his rather large text on the subject as well as a lecture series he created for a course on the subject. Below are brief reviews of the two works.The magnum written opus Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History is an interesting change of reference from a historical perspective combining the disciplines of physics, cosmology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, microbiology, evolutionary theory, archaeology, politics, religion, economics, sociology, and history into one big area of contiguous study based upon much larger timescales than those traditionally taken in the study of historical time periods. Though it takes pieces from many disciplines, it provides for an interesting, fresh, and much needed perspective on who humans are and their place in not only the world, but the entire universe. By looking at history from a much broader viewpoint (billions of years versus the more common decades or even just a few centuries) one comes away with a drastically different perspective on the universe and life. I’d highly recommend this to any general reader as early as they can find time to read through it, particularly because it provides such an excellent base for a variety of disciplines thereby better framing their future studies. I wish I had been able to read this book in the ninth or tenth grade or certainly at the latest by my freshman year in college – alas the general conception of the topic itself didn’t exist until after I had graduated from university. Although I have significant backgrounds in most, if not all, of the disciplines which comprise the tapestry of big history, the background included in the book is more than adequate to give the general reader the requisite introductions to these subjects to make big history a coherent subject on its own. This could be an extremely fundamental and life-changing book for common summer reading programs of incoming college freshman. If I could, I would make it required reading for all students at the high school level. Fortunately Bill Gates and others are helping to fund David Christian’s work to help introduce it more broadly at the high school and other educational levels. Within David Christian’s opus, there is also a collection of audio lectures produced by The Learning Company as part of their Great Courses series which I listened to as well. The collection of forty-eight lectures is entitled Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity (Great Courses, Course No. 8050). It provides a much quicker philosophical overview of the subject and doesn’t delve as deeply into the individual disciplines as the text does, but still provides a very cohesive presentation of the overall thesis. In fact, for me, the introduction to the topic was much better in these audio lectures than it was in the written book. Christian’s lecture style is fantastic and even better than his already excellent writing style. "Because of the scale on which we look at the past, you should not expect to find in it many of the familiar details, names, and personalities that you’ll find in other types of historical teaching and writing. For example, the French Revolution and the Renaissance will barely get a mention. They’ll zoom past in a blur. You’ll barely see them. Instead, what we’re going to see are some less familiar aspects of the past. … We’ll be looking, above all, for the very large patterns, the shape of the past." --David Christian In the audio lectures Christian highlights eight major thresholds which he uses as a framework by which to view the 13.4 billion years of history which the Universe has presently traversed. Then within those he uses the conceptualization of disparities in power/energy as the major driving forces/factors in history in a unique and enlightening way which provides a wealth of perspective on almost every topic (scientific or historical) one can consider. This allows one to see parallels and connections between seemingly disparate topics like the creations of stars and the first building of cities or how the big bang is similar to the invention of agriculture. I can easily say that David Christian’s works on big history are some of the most influential works I’ve ever come across – and having experienced them, I can never see our universe in the same naive way again. For those interested in taking a short and immediate look at Christian’s work, I can recommend his Ted Talk “The History of Our World in 18 Minutes” which only begins to scratch the surface of his much deeper and profound thesis: Given how profound the topic of big history is, I’m sure I’ll be writing about and referring to it often.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Must have book, encyclopaedia of our world, our universe and our reason for being here.
*by T***A on March 20, 2013*

There are gaps in our knowledge of the world and its beginnings and possible endings, but they are getting smaller as our perspectives get larger. This is a big book about the biggest questions we still have and the answers that are still being discovered and delivers the most comprehensive and easily readable account of where we are now that I have read to date. The references and reading lists offered as the voyage of discovery continues are invaluable and comprehensive. David Christian has captured a way of delivering and explaining what we know and what we might yet know of our history which propels us into the future with truth and understanding at our side and wonder in front of us. This is a great read and a fantastic adventure.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Big History-From cosmology to the present
*by N***E on February 26, 2013*

Big history was different from other interpretive looks at global history. Looking at the Earth from a global perspective maintained the social and political constructs of countries, regions, hemispheres, or areas. Developing big history as a modern “creation myth” allowed Christian to tie together modern scientific scholarship from cross-disciplinary sources. This attempted to give students an understanding of history beyond Earth; in opposition to diverse other methods that divided the Earth into separate entities. By elaborating on creation myth, big history historians released the student from having to be bound by the constraints of terrestrial perspectives. Some key concepts of the big history approach include the ideas of increasing complexity. David Christian and Fred Spier devoted over a quarter of their work to expound on the transfer of energy from simplicity to complexity and how these shifts in the universe led to life on Earth and eventually to humans. These conditions became possible under what Spier has called the “Goldilocks Principle.” Spier, “points to the fact that the circumstances must be just right for complexity to exist.”As these previous concepts were interrelated, they led to the emergence of everything. From their emergence, Christian defined several threshold moments. These include: the big bang, the formation of stars, the creation of galaxies, the emergence of our solar system and subsequent Earth, the origins of life on earth, the introduction of hominids and evolution of humans, and development of both the agricultural and industrial revolutions. The thresholds that emerged over the last 13 billion years have made, “the human species…arguably the most complex biological organism in the known universe.” Christian calculated that humans consume one hundred times the needed energy to survive. Increased complexity has defined human development from the agricultural revolution through the exponential growth of population and energy consumption of the last two hundred years. Spier’s and Christian’s main argument for sustainability lies in the increased energy flow required to maintain growth that eventually leads to decay in the theoretical framework physicists call entropy. Pedagogically focused on introducing these concepts to their students, big history delineates potential future courses of human development. Some critiques argue that Christian placed too much emphasis on entropy to outline the decay of complexity. Spier supported Christian in his approach by analyzing trends of human complexity and argued that if humans do not maintain equilibrium with their environment, complexity will revert back to a simpler form, allowing for a decay of complexity and a collapse of humanity. This decline, following the threshold of industrialization over the last two hundred years, will reach their apex and either, by optimistic measures, remain stable and constant, or reverse causing chaos and decline. In making their students aware of the risks of unchecked consumption of non-renewable resources, big history historians place the future decay or sustainability of energy flow in the hands of everyone and gives them a role in their global future. This may inspire big history students to become more proactive in environment causes for the sake of humanities’ collective future.

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