October 2012

Long ago I became used to meeting someone new and having an exchange along
the following lines:

And what do you do?
I’m a geologist
Oh, been on any interesting digs recently?

And, when it was determined that a geologist is not an archaeologist, I
became used to the conversation, if it continued at all, changing direction. But
it has always struck me as odd that we make these disciplinary distinctions –
history, archaeology, geology – when, in reality, they are all looking at the
sequence of past to present on our only home, Earth. In recent years there has
been movement towards a satisfying blurring of the archaeology/geology divide,
and a few instances can be found on this blog – understanding Mediterranean
harbours and Roman
construction for example. The same can be said of recognising the role of
geology in history – see Snot’s
Troglodytes and Wellington’s
invasion of France; indeed, the examples from military history are endless,
from Troy to the North African campaigns via Gettysburg.

But a properly joined-up story has still been difficult to find, despite the
fact that every act of life’s drama – not least the extremely brief vignettes in
which homo sapiensstars - has been staged amid the scenery and sound
effects of geological processes. But in today’s paper, I read an article on the
Big History project of David
Christian, and decided to follow up a little. The initiative’s subtitle, “An
Introduction to Everything,” sums up its ambition; it’s an heroic idea – to
connect the last 13.7 billion years into one continuous story, into which
astrophysics, geology, archaeology, and history are seamlessly merged. From the
website:

Imagine exploring 13.7B years of history – from the Big Bang to modernity.
Big history tells the complete story – with a goal of revealing common themes
and patterns that help students better understand people, civilizations and our
place in the  universe….
All too often, students learn facts and skills but don’t have the chance to
connect them all. Big history links different areas of knowledge into one
unified story. It’s a framework for learning about anything and everything. This
unified story provides students with a deeper awareness of our past, hopefully
better preparing them to help shape the future of our fragile planet.
By giving students tools to incite exploration and connect knowledge, our aim
is to help young people develop key critical thinking skills that can prove
vital in any discipline they decide to follow in their academic/professional
lives.

Christian is a historian, originally specialising in Russia, and I can’t help
but be impressed by the fact that one of his many publications is a history of
vodka. And, whatever one’s views on Bill Gates, it’s impressive that the entire
initiative is receiving his ongoing – and undoubtedly crucial - support.

I will readily admit that this is the kind of initiative that I’m a sucker
for, an educational program that links stuff together into a big story, and does
so in a provocative way. I have only just begun poking around its many facets,
but I would suggest listening to Christian’s TED
talk and then exploring the project website (which, I must say,
could benefit from a slightly more rigorous level of proofreading), together
with its international association
version. It’s not perfect, but then no project with this scale of aspiration and
scope would ever be; but I’m impressed, and would be most interested in hearing
comments and your views. It also strikes me that it’s an ideal
program into which theBig
Ideasof the Earth Science Literacy Initiative
could be integrated.

And, as a postscript, I have to mention that Walter Alvarez, the Berkeley
geologist and (somewhat controversial) pioneer of the idea of the impact-caused
demise of the dinosaurs, is one of the “founders” of Big History – he was already
teaching a course with that title since 2006. If you go to his
article on “A Geologial [sic] Perspective on Big History,” you will find the
following:

To be more quantitative, if we ask how many individual people will be born
into the next global generation, the answer is something like a billion, about
109.  To give you a graphic idea of this number, a billion grains of
fine sand is a double handful.  If we calculate how many different individuals
might possibly be born in the next global generation, considering the number of
women’s eggs available, and the number of sperm that might fertilize them, the
answer is around 1024, and that number of grains of sand would fill
the Grand Canyon! SIGNATURE

Originally published at: https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2012/10/index.html