Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Mondadori (2019), 357 pages
Description
"Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day--and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History," the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. In Origin Story, Christian takes readers on a wild ride through the entire 13.8 billion years we've come to know as "history." By focusing on defining events (thresholds), major trends, and profound questions about our origins, Christian exposes the hidden threads that tie everything together--from the creation of the planet to the advent of agriculture, nuclear war, and beyond. With stunning insights into the origin of the universe, the beginning of life, the emergence of humans, and what the future might bring, Origin Story boldly reframes our place in the cosmos."--Jacket.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member elimatta
An astonishing history, from big bang to the present. The author is a professor of history at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His background was in Russian history, but over 20 years ago he developed an interest in world history, history across the globe. That wasn’t enough for him, so
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he began teaching big history, beginning with the physics of the big bang. Bill Gates funded this to be taught in schools, and David Christian taught it at university in a modern history department. Science merges with history as he argues that analogous forces were at work in the development of the universe, the creation of earth, the formation of life, and then human epochs. His imsight is that this is an origin story, one not just for one nation or one language, but for all people. Show Less
LibraryThing member questbird
A smaller summary volume of the material from 'Maps of Time'. A great overview of the complexity thresholds we have crossed to get where we are today, from elementary physics to chemistry, to life, dinosaurs, their extinction and the rise and rise of intelligent mammals and the noosphere.
LibraryThing member LisCarey
Every culture and tradition has had its origin story, its understanding of how the world came to be as they knew it, which formed the basis for their further understanding of how to live, interact with others, get food, make clothes. Our origin stories are the basis of how we understand
Now, in the early 21st century, we know far more about the origin of the universe, our sun, our planet, and life on Earth. We live in a society of unparalleled complexity, and in the last two hundred years, we have gained the ability not just to support more human beings, but to improve the daily lives of most humans on the planet, not just an elite 10% or so.
What we haven't done yet is integrate this knowledge into a new, shared origin story that helps us cope with this new, complex, and rapidly changing world.
Christian intends this as at least a first pass at a modern origin story. In a lively, highly readable or listenable style, he lays out the basics of our new knowledge of the origins of the universe, our planet, and life on Earth, as well as an overview of the evolution of our species and development of our societies, right down to how we made the transition from strictly agrarian societies to today's high-tech, rapidly changing world.
And he looks at the challenges as well as the benefits of that transition and our current power to affect our planet.
Christian makes the point, as others have in the last few years, that we now have, in essence, the controls for our only habitable planet. We decide what species live and which ones die, and we are playing with the climate controls. If we understand and master those controls in time, we have the potential to give our species the best and most comfortable lives we have ever had.
Or we could make the planet uninhabitable for such an energy-consuming culture, and drive ourselves back to the early agrarian or even hunter-gatherer level.
Or we could render the planet uninhabitable for our species altogether, and leave Earth to start over again, with other species in a climate unlike any that has existed since the first primates evolved.
Despite that potential grim outcome, I found this overall a lively and interesting book, well worth the time I spent listening to it. Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
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everything.Now, in the early 21st century, we know far more about the origin of the universe, our sun, our planet, and life on Earth. We live in a society of unparalleled complexity, and in the last two hundred years, we have gained the ability not just to support more human beings, but to improve the daily lives of most humans on the planet, not just an elite 10% or so.
What we haven't done yet is integrate this knowledge into a new, shared origin story that helps us cope with this new, complex, and rapidly changing world.
Christian intends this as at least a first pass at a modern origin story. In a lively, highly readable or listenable style, he lays out the basics of our new knowledge of the origins of the universe, our planet, and life on Earth, as well as an overview of the evolution of our species and development of our societies, right down to how we made the transition from strictly agrarian societies to today's high-tech, rapidly changing world.
And he looks at the challenges as well as the benefits of that transition and our current power to affect our planet.
Christian makes the point, as others have in the last few years, that we now have, in essence, the controls for our only habitable planet. We decide what species live and which ones die, and we are playing with the climate controls. If we understand and master those controls in time, we have the potential to give our species the best and most comfortable lives we have ever had.
Or we could make the planet uninhabitable for such an energy-consuming culture, and drive ourselves back to the early agrarian or even hunter-gatherer level.
Or we could render the planet uninhabitable for our species altogether, and leave Earth to start over again, with other species in a climate unlike any that has existed since the first primates evolved.
Despite that potential grim outcome, I found this overall a lively and interesting book, well worth the time I spent listening to it. Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
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LibraryThing member strandbooks
how I wish I understood chemistry and physics so books like this wouldn’t give me splitting headaches. Yet every year or so I pick one up determined to understand the universe. As Chris says “oh you are in your ‘I will prove I’m smart enough to understand this’ frustrated mood.” He says
Back to Origin Story, I did have a non-headache mind-blown moment during the chapter about the first photosynthesizing one-celled organisms that output so much oxygen we went into a 1 hundred million year ice age until the Earth’s plates moved and enough volcanoes erupted...this was about 3.5 billion years ago.
The book is split perfectly in half with 155 pages pre-humans and 155 pages human life. Most of the human section is similar to books like “Guns Germs and Steel” and “sapiens” but his last chapter about the near future is worth reading.
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it’s from my lack of imagination. (I still argue with him about those stupid worms in Dune.)Back to Origin Story, I did have a non-headache mind-blown moment during the chapter about the first photosynthesizing one-celled organisms that output so much oxygen we went into a 1 hundred million year ice age until the Earth’s plates moved and enough volcanoes erupted...this was about 3.5 billion years ago.
The book is split perfectly in half with 155 pages pre-humans and 155 pages human life. Most of the human section is similar to books like “Guns Germs and Steel” and “sapiens” but his last chapter about the near future is worth reading.
Show Less
LibraryThing member stellarexplorer
I was in love with Big History before it was formally inaugurated by David Christian with his influential book Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History in 2004. Christian espoused a view of history that I’d unknowingly held since a small child: that a history that starts with written language
Though Christian’s work has motivated an academic discipline, he was far from the first nor only exponent of its essentials. A very abbreviated list, if you’re a lumper and not a splitter, might include Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Sagan, William McNeill, and Jared Diamond. Big history has since become incorporated into many high school curricula, influenced by Bill Gates who was so gobsmacked that he founded the Big History Project in collaboration with Christian as a worldwide effort to promote the teaching of the subject.
Big History is history writ large. It encompasses all we know about the past, starting with the Big Bang, through the formation of galaxies, solar systems, our planet Earth, the origin and evolution life on Earth, human evolution, and eventually the human spread around the globe and human society. It seeks universal patterns of explanation and is by nature necessarily multidisciplinary.
Origin Story is Christian’s updated account of this discipline, and his claim is that Big History represents a modern creation story, a secular creation story. In this way of seeing things, a species-wide narrative of our origins is still being elaborated, is continuing to unfold. But its elements are visible. And if we are able to make the transition to a sustainable future — far from certain as, human conflict aside, 10,000 years of unguided human geoengineering careen toward a global environmental confrontation — our descendants may well tell much the same story.
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is a very small one; that one that begins with the human career is only slightly larger. That a human-centric history is in fact parochial.Though Christian’s work has motivated an academic discipline, he was far from the first nor only exponent of its essentials. A very abbreviated list, if you’re a lumper and not a splitter, might include Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Sagan, William McNeill, and Jared Diamond. Big history has since become incorporated into many high school curricula, influenced by Bill Gates who was so gobsmacked that he founded the Big History Project in collaboration with Christian as a worldwide effort to promote the teaching of the subject.
Big History is history writ large. It encompasses all we know about the past, starting with the Big Bang, through the formation of galaxies, solar systems, our planet Earth, the origin and evolution life on Earth, human evolution, and eventually the human spread around the globe and human society. It seeks universal patterns of explanation and is by nature necessarily multidisciplinary.
Origin Story is Christian’s updated account of this discipline, and his claim is that Big History represents a modern creation story, a secular creation story. In this way of seeing things, a species-wide narrative of our origins is still being elaborated, is continuing to unfold. But its elements are visible. And if we are able to make the transition to a sustainable future — far from certain as, human conflict aside, 10,000 years of unguided human geoengineering careen toward a global environmental confrontation — our descendants may well tell much the same story.
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Language
Original publication date
2018
Physical description
357 p.; 6.73 inches
ISBN
8804711027 / 9788804711025