The goal of this paper is to formalize better the division of big history into three main stages (phases, eras). In my own work they are “dynamical realms,” 1. physical laws, 2. biological evolution, and 3. cultural evolution. I show a deep similarity in two mighty transitions; first, from dynamical realm 1 to 2, and then from 2 to 3. The common “metapattern” in these transitions is that of generalized evolutionary dynamics, which in both cases opened up vast new arenas of possibility space. I first present relevant conclu-sions from my book, Quarks to Culture. A “grand sequence” of twelve fundamental levels was forged through a repeated cycle of “combogenesis” spanning the dynamical realms as families of levels. Next, I provide examples of other scholars who have similarly weighed in on a three-fold arc; notably Christian, Spier, Chaisson, Rolston, Salk, and Voros (following Jansch). Like me, all have nominally recognized similarities between biological and cultural evolution as important in the dynamics of realms two and three. Generally, these scholars have not placed primary emphasis on general evolutionary dynamics as a multiply-instantiated process. The PVS metapattern for evolution (propagation, variation, and selection) is well established as overarching across many patterns in biology, following life’s origin. In culture the operation of general evolution-ary dynamics is, I suggest, dual-tier, consisting of cognitive PVS of individuals coupled to social PVS of groups. The emergence of realm-forming PVS-dynamics twice (biology, culture) created radically new ways to explore and stabilize patterns in expansive fields of diverse types within the respective dynamics. Thus, we can recognize a fundamental-ly similar reason (i.e., two emergent forms of evolutionary dynamics) for why so many scholars have correctly, in my opinion, discerned a threefold arc of big history. Im-portant as well in the flow of progress from quarks to culture were two only slightly less major instantiations of PVS-dynamics (though both crucial): an era of chemical evolution within the realm of physical laws, which led into the realm of biological evolution, and also the evolution of the animal cognitive learning PVS of trial, error, and success, which was essential to the path into cultural evolution. In concluding remarks, I note several outstanding issues: alternative proposals for five orders or four dimensions (i.e., divisions more than three in the arc of big history); the use of the word “evolution,” and three matrices (cosmosphere, biosphere, civisphere) that contain and are constituted by the varieties of patterns within the corresponding dynamical realms.
{"title":"The Metapattern of General Evolutionary Dynamics and the Three Dynamical Realms of Big History","authors":"T. Volk","doi":"10.22339/JBH.V4I3.4320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/JBH.V4I3.4320","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of this paper is to formalize better the division of big history into three main stages (phases, eras). In my own work they are “dynamical realms,” 1. physical laws, 2. biological evolution, and 3. cultural evolution. I show a deep similarity in two mighty transitions; first, from dynamical realm 1 to 2, and then from 2 to 3. The common “metapattern” in these transitions is that of generalized evolutionary dynamics, which in both cases opened up vast new arenas of possibility space. I first present relevant conclu-sions from my book, Quarks to Culture. A “grand sequence” of twelve fundamental levels was forged through a repeated cycle of “combogenesis” spanning the dynamical realms as families of levels. Next, I provide examples of other scholars who have similarly weighed in on a three-fold arc; notably Christian, Spier, Chaisson, Rolston, Salk, and Voros (following Jansch). Like me, all have nominally recognized similarities between biological and cultural evolution as important in the dynamics of realms two and three. Generally, these scholars have not placed primary emphasis on general evolutionary dynamics as a multiply-instantiated process. The PVS metapattern for evolution (propagation, variation, and selection) is well established as overarching across many patterns in biology, following life’s origin. In culture the operation of general evolution-ary dynamics is, I suggest, dual-tier, consisting of cognitive PVS of individuals coupled to social PVS of groups. The emergence of realm-forming PVS-dynamics twice (biology, culture) created radically new ways to explore and stabilize patterns in expansive fields of diverse types within the respective dynamics. Thus, we can recognize a fundamental-ly similar reason (i.e., two emergent forms of evolutionary dynamics) for why so many scholars have correctly, in my opinion, discerned a threefold arc of big history. Im-portant as well in the flow of progress from quarks to culture were two only slightly less major instantiations of PVS-dynamics (though both crucial): an era of chemical evolution within the realm of physical laws, which led into the realm of biological evolution, and also the evolution of the animal cognitive learning PVS of trial, error, and success, which was essential to the path into cultural evolution. In concluding remarks, I note several outstanding issues: alternative proposals for five orders or four dimensions (i.e., divisions more than three in the arc of big history); the use of the word “evolution,” and three matrices (cosmosphere, biosphere, civisphere) that contain and are constituted by the varieties of patterns within the corresponding dynamical realms.","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"71 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134530063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cyborgization is a hot topic these days. This is an intriguing process that is the subject of many futuristic novels and which at the same time takes place right before our eyes. In the present article we discuss the development of cyborgization, its place in Big History, its background and future directions, as well as the problems and risks of this interesting process. The authors are concerned about the question of whether the time will come when a person will mainly or completely consist not of biological, but of artificial material. The article also touches upon other problems and risks associated with future scientific and technological progress.
{"title":"Crossing the Threshold of Cyborgization","authors":"A. Grinin, L. Grinin","doi":"10.22339/JBH.V4I3.4330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/JBH.V4I3.4330","url":null,"abstract":"Cyborgization is a hot topic these days. This is an intriguing process that is the subject of many futuristic novels and which at the same time takes place right before our eyes. In the present article we discuss the development of cyborgization, its place in Big History, its background and future directions, as well as the problems and risks of this interesting process. The authors are concerned about the question of whether the time will come when a person will mainly or completely consist not of biological, but of artificial material. The article also touches upon other problems and risks associated with future scientific and technological progress.","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132639642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chaotic/fractal analysis of the Viking LR (Labeled Release) experiment and of Mars rover images provides evidences of present and, respectively, past life on Mars, suggesting the presence of microorganisms on the Red Planet. The possible presence of living beings on Mars is an open question that cannot be disproven at this time. 75 Bianciardi, Search for Life on Mars restarting the entire run, he decided to save time and restart the run from somewhere in the middle. While they matched at first, the runs eventually began to diverge dramatically—the second run losing all resemblance to the first within a few "model" months, a long story that resulted in presenting a way to treat this strange indeterministic world. Currently, in physics and biology, chaos description clearly appears able to describe our real world. What is chaos? In everyday language "chaos" implies the existence of unpredictable behavior. Chaos embodies important principles: extreme sensitivity to initial conditions due to nonlinearity; complex dynamics where cause and effect are not proportional; long-term prediction becomes impossible; a statistical description of the dynamic system is possible, only. Chaos owns a geometry; it is the fractal geometry that was revealed by Benoit B. Mandelbrot. Trees and bronchial trees, tissues under microscope as well as neurons, can be described by the geometry of chaos (fractal geometry), with their statistical laws, like self-similarity. This new geometry permits us to examine, to measure, the biological entities with high deep meaning. Fractal structures are also clearly visible in physics: solar system, galaxies, . . . . Our Results: Searching for Signs of Life on the Red Planet by Chaotic Analysis Chaotic Analysis of Viking LR Experiments The first (and only) known life detection experiments on Mars were performed by the Viking landers in 1976. One of these was the Labeled Release (LR) experiment by Levin and Straat with the injections of organic compounds in Martian soil samples (Figure
维京LR(标记释放)实验和火星探测器图像的混沌/分形分析分别提供了火星上现在和过去生命的证据，表明火星上存在微生物。火星上可能存在生物是一个悬而未决的问题，目前还无法证明。Bianciardi, Search for Life on Mars重新开始整个运行，他决定节省时间，从中间的某个地方重新开始运行。虽然它们一开始是匹配的，但最终开始出现巨大的分歧——第二次运行在几个“模型”月内失去了与第一次运行的所有相似之处，这是一个很长的故事，最终提出了一种对待这个奇怪的不确定世界的方法。目前，在物理学和生物学中，混沌描述显然能够描述我们的现实世界。什么是混乱?在日常语言中，“混沌”意味着不可预测行为的存在。混沌体现了重要的原理:非线性对初始条件的极端敏感性;因果不成比例的复杂动态;长期预测变得不可能;对动态系统的统计描述是可能的。混沌拥有几何学;它是由Benoit B. Mandelbrot揭示的分形几何。树木和支气管树，显微镜下的组织以及神经元，都可以用混沌几何(分形几何)来描述，具有自相似等统计规律。这种新的几何学使我们能够检查和测量具有高度深刻意义的生物实体。分形结构在物理学中也清晰可见:太阳系、星系、. . . .第一次(也是唯一一次)已知的火星生命探测实验是在1976年由维京号着陆器进行的。其中之一是莱文和斯特拉特进行的标记释放(LR)实验，在火星土壤样本中注入有机化合物(图1)
{"title":"Searching for Life on Mars: the Role of Chaos","authors":"G. Biancardi","doi":"10.22339/jbh.v4i2.4240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i2.4240","url":null,"abstract":"Chaotic/fractal analysis of the Viking LR (Labeled Release) experiment and of Mars rover images provides evidences of present and, respectively, past life on Mars, suggesting the presence of microorganisms on the Red Planet. The possible presence of living beings on Mars is an open question that cannot be disproven at this time. 75 Bianciardi, Search for Life on Mars restarting the entire run, he decided to save time and restart the run from somewhere in the middle. While they matched at first, the runs eventually began to diverge dramatically—the second run losing all resemblance to the first within a few \"model\" months, a long story that resulted in presenting a way to treat this strange indeterministic world. Currently, in physics and biology, chaos description clearly appears able to describe our real world. What is chaos? In everyday language \"chaos\" implies the existence of unpredictable behavior. Chaos embodies important principles: extreme sensitivity to initial conditions due to nonlinearity; complex dynamics where cause and effect are not proportional; long-term prediction becomes impossible; a statistical description of the dynamic system is possible, only. Chaos owns a geometry; it is the fractal geometry that was revealed by Benoit B. Mandelbrot. Trees and bronchial trees, tissues under microscope as well as neurons, can be described by the geometry of chaos (fractal geometry), with their statistical laws, like self-similarity. This new geometry permits us to examine, to measure, the biological entities with high deep meaning. Fractal structures are also clearly visible in physics: solar system, galaxies, . . . . Our Results: Searching for Signs of Life on the Red Planet by Chaotic Analysis Chaotic Analysis of Viking LR Experiments The first (and only) known life detection experiments on Mars were performed by the Viking landers in 1976. One of these was the Labeled Release (LR) experiment by Levin and Straat with the injections of organic compounds in Martian soil samples (Figure","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130225892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology had been offering a dedicated climate change course since 2009 although students were uncertain as to how well this would work due to the complexity as well as vastness of climate problems. In 2015 we took the opportunity to revise this course. Because of Big History’s interdisciplinary nature, we have been incorporating it as the pedagogical framework to help deliver macroscopic sustainability issues up to the present. In this study, we present our teaching experience and demonstrate course alterations in philosophy and learning outcomes as well as curriculum. We also share students’ feedback and their comments on the learning experience. Program Origin The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was established in 1991. Before 2009, environmental studies at HKUST were issueas well as domain-specific. During that period, only the Environmental Engineering and Environmental Science programs were offered, and neither was dedicated to macroscopic environmental issues or designed as a general education course on climate change or sustainability. HKUST recognized the desperate need at the time to have a macroscopic general education course when two major reports were publicized: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) and the Global Environment Outlook 4 (GEO4). Thus the university established an Interdisciplinary Program Office (as a school) in 2008 and a Division of Environment in 2009 with joint faculty from different schools. In the same year, a prototype general education course on macroscopic environmental issues was launched, namely Climate Change Risk, Mitigation and Adaptations. The course description for Climate Change Risk, Mitigation and Adaptations is as follows: overview of climate change and related issues: the physical science basis, impacts, risk identification, mitigation and adaptation measures. Current energy systems and renewable energy resources. Green building and end-use energy efficiency. Local and regional vulnerabilities: extreme weather events, rise of sea levels, storm surge, coastal flooding and stress on water resources; associated adaptation and risk reduction measures. From 2009 to 2014 we delivered general sustainability content using GEO4 for five classes. We also referred to IPCC Wong, Feasibility Study 170 AR4 for climate science for seven classes, risk and adaptation for four classes, and mitigation for three classes. We also held two guest lectures and three class discussions (see Table 1). We started the course from a traditional environmental education perspective for the first six consecutive years. Nominal feedback from students, with reference to the Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs), showed that students were able to recognize the broad scope and interconnectivity of climate change issues. They could also defend their stance for a given topic for debate from various perspectives and understan
{"title":"Feasibility Study for Employing an Interdisciplinary Framework for Sustainability Education: Teaching Experience from Hong Kong","authors":"Aidan M. Wong","doi":"10.22339/jbh.v4i2.4290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i2.4290","url":null,"abstract":"The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology had been offering a dedicated climate change course since 2009 although students were uncertain as to how well this would work due to the complexity as well as vastness of climate problems. In 2015 we took the opportunity to revise this course. Because of Big History’s interdisciplinary nature, we have been incorporating it as the pedagogical framework to help deliver macroscopic sustainability issues up to the present. In this study, we present our teaching experience and demonstrate course alterations in philosophy and learning outcomes as well as curriculum. We also share students’ feedback and their comments on the learning experience. Program Origin The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) was established in 1991. Before 2009, environmental studies at HKUST were issueas well as domain-specific. During that period, only the Environmental Engineering and Environmental Science programs were offered, and neither was dedicated to macroscopic environmental issues or designed as a general education course on climate change or sustainability. HKUST recognized the desperate need at the time to have a macroscopic general education course when two major reports were publicized: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) and the Global Environment Outlook 4 (GEO4). Thus the university established an Interdisciplinary Program Office (as a school) in 2008 and a Division of Environment in 2009 with joint faculty from different schools. In the same year, a prototype general education course on macroscopic environmental issues was launched, namely Climate Change Risk, Mitigation and Adaptations. The course description for Climate Change Risk, Mitigation and Adaptations is as follows: overview of climate change and related issues: the physical science basis, impacts, risk identification, mitigation and adaptation measures. Current energy systems and renewable energy resources. Green building and end-use energy efficiency. Local and regional vulnerabilities: extreme weather events, rise of sea levels, storm surge, coastal flooding and stress on water resources; associated adaptation and risk reduction measures. From 2009 to 2014 we delivered general sustainability content using GEO4 for five classes. We also referred to IPCC Wong, Feasibility Study 170 AR4 for climate science for seven classes, risk and adaptation for four classes, and mitigation for three classes. We also held two guest lectures and three class discussions (see Table 1). We started the course from a traditional environmental education perspective for the first six consecutive years. Nominal feedback from students, with reference to the Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs), showed that students were able to recognize the broad scope and interconnectivity of climate change issues. They could also defend their stance for a given topic for debate from various perspectives and understan","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130387456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SETI is one of the significant challenges to its framework that expands the purposes of big history. Big history had exerted similar impact on world history, as did previous national histories, which in turn had impacted religious history. Big History seeks to use evidence and the best theoretical analyses to integrate studies of the cosmos, Earth, life on Earth, and humanity. SETI shares the interest in the cosmos, but examines exo-planets, astrobiology, and possible extra-terrestrial intelligence. In this article, we consider the developing relationship between the purposes of SETI and big history. Correspondence | Lowell S. Gustafson, lowell.gustafson@villanova.edu Citation | Gustafson, L. (2020) SETI and Big History: Challenge and Extension. Journal of Big History, IV(2); 4 17. DOI | https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i2.4210
SETI是对其框架的重大挑战之一，它扩展了大历史的目的。大历史对世界历史产生了类似的影响，就像以前的民族历史一样，反过来又影响了宗教史。大历史寻求使用证据和最好的理论分析来整合宇宙，地球，地球上的生命和人类的研究。SETI对宇宙感兴趣，但研究系外行星、天体生物学和可能的地外智慧。在这篇文章中，我们考虑了SETI的目的和大历史之间的发展关系。通讯| Lowell S. Gustafson, lowell.gustafson@villanova.edu引文| Gustafson, L. (2020) SETI与大历史:挑战与延伸。大历史学报，IV(2);4 17。DOI | https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i2.4210
{"title":"SETI and Big History: Challenge and Extension","authors":"Lowell S. Gustafson","doi":"10.22339/jbh.v4i2.4210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i2.4210","url":null,"abstract":"SETI is one of the significant challenges to its framework that expands the purposes of big history. Big history had exerted similar impact on world history, as did previous national histories, which in turn had impacted religious history. Big History seeks to use evidence and the best theoretical analyses to integrate studies of the cosmos, Earth, life on Earth, and humanity. SETI shares the interest in the cosmos, but examines exo-planets, astrobiology, and possible extra-terrestrial intelligence. In this article, we consider the developing relationship between the purposes of SETI and big history. Correspondence | Lowell S. Gustafson, lowell.gustafson@villanova.edu Citation | Gustafson, L. (2020) SETI and Big History: Challenge and Extension. Journal of Big History, IV(2); 4 17. DOI | https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i2.4210","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131334858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
At a time when anger and anomie appear to be the order of the day, and the ideals of the Enlightenment are being bombarded from every direction, Yuval Noah Harari and Steven Pinker have entered the fray once more to remind us that all is not lost and to ensure us that reports of the death of liberalism are greatly exaggerated. Taken together, Pinker and Harari, in their most recent books, offer a calculated and compelling assessment of how far humanity has come as a species and where we should look to go in the future. In Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Pinker contends that now, more than ever, as the dominant narrative has become that of a deepening global crisis and the failure of modernity, classical liberalism needs a forceful and steadfast defense. Using a bewildering amount of data that are neatly broken down into digestible graphs, Pinker is able to argue convincingly that not only has the Enlightenment project worked reasonably well but that when properly appreciated, “the ideals of the Enlightenment are, in fact, stirring, inspiring, noble—a reason to live” (Pinker 6). Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century picks up at the point where Pinker leaves off. After establishing early in his book that liberalism is (as Pinker also contends), “the most successful and most versatile political model humans have so far developed for dealing with the challenges of the modern world” (Harari xviii), Harari then looks to the immediate future and asks whether the ideals of the Enlightenment will be enough to deal with the oncoming revolutions in information technology and biotechnology. He maintains that in the next few decades humankind will be confronted with the most challenging dilemma we have ever faced. If liberalism wishes to survive in a world where infotech and biotech collide, it will have to adjust and reinvent itself once again. Both men agree that we are living at a time when it is difficult “to find meaning and purpose if traditional religious beliefs about an immortal soul are undermined by our best science” (Pinker 3) and that we are, therefore, “left with the task of creating an updated story of the world” (Harari 16). In a world where many exhibit “an inability to conceive of a higher purpose in anything other than religion,” and where “cynicism about the institutions of modernity” (Pinker xv) has become the norm, how will this new story go? Is a new, captivating, and unified narrative even necessary— or desirable? Harari, for one, is unequivocal on the matter: “If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random” (Harari 266). Although Pinker and Harari do agree on much and more, they also have their points of disagreement. In fact, they are somewhat reminiscent of Pestov and Sergey Ivanovich at one of The Past, Present, and Future of Progress
{"title":"The Past, Present, and Future of Progress","authors":"M. O. Lozano-Justice","doi":"10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4140","url":null,"abstract":"At a time when anger and anomie appear to be the order of the day, and the ideals of the Enlightenment are being bombarded from every direction, Yuval Noah Harari and Steven Pinker have entered the fray once more to remind us that all is not lost and to ensure us that reports of the death of liberalism are greatly exaggerated. Taken together, Pinker and Harari, in their most recent books, offer a calculated and compelling assessment of how far humanity has come as a species and where we should look to go in the future. In Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Pinker contends that now, more than ever, as the dominant narrative has become that of a deepening global crisis and the failure of modernity, classical liberalism needs a forceful and steadfast defense. Using a bewildering amount of data that are neatly broken down into digestible graphs, Pinker is able to argue convincingly that not only has the Enlightenment project worked reasonably well but that when properly appreciated, “the ideals of the Enlightenment are, in fact, stirring, inspiring, noble—a reason to live” (Pinker 6). Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century picks up at the point where Pinker leaves off. After establishing early in his book that liberalism is (as Pinker also contends), “the most successful and most versatile political model humans have so far developed for dealing with the challenges of the modern world” (Harari xviii), Harari then looks to the immediate future and asks whether the ideals of the Enlightenment will be enough to deal with the oncoming revolutions in information technology and biotechnology. He maintains that in the next few decades humankind will be confronted with the most challenging dilemma we have ever faced. If liberalism wishes to survive in a world where infotech and biotech collide, it will have to adjust and reinvent itself once again. Both men agree that we are living at a time when it is difficult “to find meaning and purpose if traditional religious beliefs about an immortal soul are undermined by our best science” (Pinker 3) and that we are, therefore, “left with the task of creating an updated story of the world” (Harari 16). In a world where many exhibit “an inability to conceive of a higher purpose in anything other than religion,” and where “cynicism about the institutions of modernity” (Pinker xv) has become the norm, how will this new story go? Is a new, captivating, and unified narrative even necessary— or desirable? Harari, for one, is unequivocal on the matter: “If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random” (Harari 266). Although Pinker and Harari do agree on much and more, they also have their points of disagreement. In fact, they are somewhat reminiscent of Pestov and Sergey Ivanovich at one of The Past, Present, and Future of Progress","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121798895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
What if humans continue to pursue “more and better”? What if we continue living within our safe anthropocentric boundaries? What if we ignore the question of when too much is too much? Margaret Atwood’s “speculative fiction” presents no new worlds, as Atwood’s world resembles our own; her novels present, on the other hand, what-if realities. By extrapolating trends, Oryx and Crake poses the afore-mentioned questions within Modernity’s framework. Atwood’s novel revisits key concepts such as time and subjectivity and brings progression to a halt. What may the wish to stop time, our human condition, result in, after all? Modernity and its concepts are under scrutiny in a novel in which climate change and nature seem to have been surpassed. The present paper aims, therefore, at investigating what this “us without a world” story, which becomes a “world without us” one, can tell us about the pursuits of Modernity and their repercussions: that is, ecological awareness and the good Anthropocene.
{"title":"The Wish to Stop Time: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake","authors":"Tatiana de Freitas Massuno","doi":"10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4170","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4170","url":null,"abstract":"What if humans continue to pursue “more and better”? What if we continue living within our safe anthropocentric boundaries? What if we ignore the question of when too much is too much? Margaret Atwood’s “speculative fiction” presents no new worlds, as Atwood’s world resembles our own; her novels present, on the other hand, what-if realities. By extrapolating trends, Oryx and Crake poses the afore-mentioned questions within Modernity’s framework. Atwood’s novel revisits key concepts such as time and subjectivity and brings progression to a halt. What may the wish to stop time, our human condition, result in, after all? Modernity and its concepts are under scrutiny in a novel in which climate change and nature seem to have been surpassed. The present paper aims, therefore, at investigating what this “us without a world” story, which becomes a “world without us” one, can tell us about the pursuits of Modernity and their repercussions: that is, ecological awareness and the good Anthropocene.","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134154163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Father Thomas Berry was born in North Carolina in 1914, the third of thirteen children. He joined the Passionist Order in 1933, after his first year of college, and he earned a PhD from Catholic University in 1948, focusing on Giambattista Vico. Berry studied in China in 1948-1949. He developed a lifelong interest in Asian religions, later writing Buddhism (1967) and Religions of India: Hinduism, Yoga, Buddhism (1971). In the United States, Berry taught at a variety of Roman Catholic universities. At Fordham (1966-1981), he helped to create a distinctive religious studies program, teaching courses in world religion and cosmic Christianity. In 1970, Berry founded the Riverdale Center of Religious Research on the Hudson River just north of Manhattan. The center promoted human spiritual transformation and reflection on the mysteries of reality. Berry directed the center from 1970 to 1995. From 1975 to 1987, he was president of the American Teilhard Association and editor of Teilhard Studies. Berry retired to Greensboro, North Carolina in 1995, living in an apartment above a former stable owned by his brother Joe and sister-in-law Jean. He suffered several strokes and moved to a care facility in 2008, dying in 2009. More than a scholar and a priest, Berry was a “shaman.” As a priest and a scholar, he was trained in theology and in history, culture, ideas, and religion. He described himself variously, using terms like “cosmologist,” “geologian,” and “Earth scholar.” In the context of Big History, he might best be described as an “ecotheologian” in the spirit of Teilhard de Chardin. Berry promoted ecumenical and interfaith dialogue over his long life and career, notably with a deep interest in indigenous spirituality. More famously still, he promoted the “New Story,” a spiritually inflected creation account, epic of evolution, or Big History. “The story of the universe is the story of the emergence of a galactic system in which each new level of expression emerges through the urgency of self-transcendence,” Berry argued in “The New Story” in 1978. His “gospel” message was that the “human emerges not only as an earthling, but also as a worlding. We bear the universe in our beings as the universe bears us in its being. The two have a total presence to each other and to that deeper mystery out of which both the universe and ourselves have emerged.” Berry retold this “New Story” in many forms, notably in Dream of the Earth (1988), The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (1999), and with cosmologist Brian Thomas Swimme in The Universe Story (1992). Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, in turn, retold it in a book and documentary film entitled Journey of the Universe (2011). Berry’s goal was for people not just to learn about indigenous cultures, religious traditions, and modern science, but to learn from them how to live. This same goal animates Tucker, Grim, and Angyal’s biography of Berry. Readers will learn much about Berry, but the biography also is written t
托马斯·贝里神父1914年出生于北卡罗来纳州，在13个孩子中排行老三。1933年，他在大学一年级后加入了激情会，并于1948年在天主教大学获得博士学位，主要研究詹巴蒂斯塔·维科。贝瑞1948-1949年在中国学习。他对亚洲宗教产生了毕生的兴趣，后来撰写了《佛教》(1967)和《印度宗教:印度教、瑜伽、佛教》(1971)。在美国，贝瑞在多所罗马天主教大学任教。在福特汉姆大学(1966-1981)，他帮助创建了一个独特的宗教研究项目，教授世界宗教和宇宙基督教的课程。1970年，贝瑞在曼哈顿以北的哈德逊河上成立了里弗代尔宗教研究中心。该中心促进了人类的精神转型和对现实奥秘的反思。贝里从1970年到1995年担任该中心主任。从1975年到1987年，他是美国德哈德协会的主席和德哈德研究的编辑。1995年，贝瑞退休到北卡罗来纳州的格林斯博罗，住在他哥哥乔和嫂子琼拥有的旧马厩楼上的一套公寓里。他多次中风，并于2008年转移到一家护理机构，于2009年去世。贝瑞不仅仅是一个学者和牧师，他还是一个“萨满”。作为一名牧师和学者，他接受了神学、历史、文化、思想和宗教方面的训练。他对自己的描述五花八门，比如“宇宙学家”、“地质学家”和“地球学者”。在《大历史》的背景下，他可能最适合被描述为具有德·德·夏尔丹精神的“生态神学家”。贝瑞在他漫长的一生和职业生涯中促进了普世和宗教间的对话，尤其是对土著精神的浓厚兴趣。更著名的是，他推广了“新故事”，这是一种精神上的创造描述，进化史诗，或大历史。1978年，贝瑞在《新故事》(The new story)一书中指出:“宇宙的故事是一个星系出现的故事，在这个星系中，每一个新的表达水平都是通过自我超越的紧迫性而出现的。”他的“福音”信息是，“人类不仅作为地球生物出现，而且作为世界出现。”我们的存在承载着宇宙，就像宇宙承载着我们一样。这两者对彼此来说都是完全存在的，对宇宙和我们自己都产生的更深层次的神秘来说也是如此。”贝瑞以多种形式重新讲述了这个“新故事”，特别是在《地球之梦》(1988)、《伟大的工作:我们通往未来的路》(1999)以及与宇宙学家布莱恩·托马斯·斯温梅合作的《宇宙故事》(1992)中。斯温姆和玛丽·伊芙琳·塔克在2011年出版的名为《宇宙之旅》(Journey of the Universe)的书和纪录片中重新讲述了这个故事。贝瑞的目标不仅是让人们了解土著文化、宗教传统和现代科学，还要向他们学习如何生活。塔克、格里姆和安杰尔的《贝瑞传》也是出于同样的目的。读者将对贝瑞有更多的了解，但这本传记也是为了鼓励读者从贝瑞的生活和工作中学习。它不是圣徒传记。它也不是一部中立的或批判性的学术著作。更确切地说，这是他的学生和同事们对贝里的一种迷人的欣赏。这一点不应被解读为消极的。这是为了向这本书的精神致敬——读者不仅要了解贝瑞，还要向他学习如何理解现代世界并在现代世界中生活得更好。贝瑞将自己的职业定义为更接近于萨满巫师，而不是学者或牧师——用塔克、格里姆和安杰尔的话说，“深入宇宙和地球的力量，为社区带来一体化愿景的人”。“这是我自己的精神结构的萨满维度，要求我以某种方式进入与自然世界的内在体验，”贝瑞在他生命的最后一刻解释道。“这不仅仅是进入某种形式的精神生活，而是承担一种社会角色。”这个角色是在促进新故事和它所引发的激进主义。塔克、格里姆和安杰尔讲述了贝瑞的生活，从一个旧故事到一个新故事。“从他作为一名文化和知识历史学家的开始”——以及他作为一名传统罗马天主教徒的成长经历——“贝瑞成为了一名地球历史学家。”他“在自己的一生中见证了一个多元文化的星球大历史和新故事的出现
{"title":"Big History and the New Story","authors":"William H. Katerberg","doi":"10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4150","url":null,"abstract":"Father Thomas Berry was born in North Carolina in 1914, the third of thirteen children. He joined the Passionist Order in 1933, after his first year of college, and he earned a PhD from Catholic University in 1948, focusing on Giambattista Vico. Berry studied in China in 1948-1949. He developed a lifelong interest in Asian religions, later writing Buddhism (1967) and Religions of India: Hinduism, Yoga, Buddhism (1971). In the United States, Berry taught at a variety of Roman Catholic universities. At Fordham (1966-1981), he helped to create a distinctive religious studies program, teaching courses in world religion and cosmic Christianity. In 1970, Berry founded the Riverdale Center of Religious Research on the Hudson River just north of Manhattan. The center promoted human spiritual transformation and reflection on the mysteries of reality. Berry directed the center from 1970 to 1995. From 1975 to 1987, he was president of the American Teilhard Association and editor of Teilhard Studies. Berry retired to Greensboro, North Carolina in 1995, living in an apartment above a former stable owned by his brother Joe and sister-in-law Jean. He suffered several strokes and moved to a care facility in 2008, dying in 2009. More than a scholar and a priest, Berry was a “shaman.” As a priest and a scholar, he was trained in theology and in history, culture, ideas, and religion. He described himself variously, using terms like “cosmologist,” “geologian,” and “Earth scholar.” In the context of Big History, he might best be described as an “ecotheologian” in the spirit of Teilhard de Chardin. Berry promoted ecumenical and interfaith dialogue over his long life and career, notably with a deep interest in indigenous spirituality. More famously still, he promoted the “New Story,” a spiritually inflected creation account, epic of evolution, or Big History. “The story of the universe is the story of the emergence of a galactic system in which each new level of expression emerges through the urgency of self-transcendence,” Berry argued in “The New Story” in 1978. His “gospel” message was that the “human emerges not only as an earthling, but also as a worlding. We bear the universe in our beings as the universe bears us in its being. The two have a total presence to each other and to that deeper mystery out of which both the universe and ourselves have emerged.” Berry retold this “New Story” in many forms, notably in Dream of the Earth (1988), The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (1999), and with cosmologist Brian Thomas Swimme in The Universe Story (1992). Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, in turn, retold it in a book and documentary film entitled Journey of the Universe (2011). Berry’s goal was for people not just to learn about indigenous cultures, religious traditions, and modern science, but to learn from them how to live. This same goal animates Tucker, Grim, and Angyal’s biography of Berry. Readers will learn much about Berry, but the biography also is written t","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132872485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As a social phenomenon, is war subordinate to politics, as Carl von Clausewitz argued in the early nineteenth century, or, instead, is it the product of an instinctive ‘warrior culture’, common to all peoples and times and beyond politics, as John Keegan suggested in the late twentieth? Should we emphasize ‘essential historical elements in the search for a tem-poral continuum in warfare? In this article, we stress the relevance of the ‘perennity of war’ thesis, and the impropriety of a dichotomy between political rationality vs. instinct. The results of the clash between these two strands of thought about the origins of warfare face limitations due to the absence of a temporal ‘play of scales’, so that short-term approaches emerge as incompatible with macro-historical views. We suggest that a deep understanding of the phenomenon of warfare must consider the interaction and the feedback between processes at different time scales.
作为一种社会现象，战争是否像卡尔·冯·克劳塞维茨(Carl von Clausewitz)在19世纪初所说的那样，从属于政治?还是像约翰·基冈(John Keegan)在20世纪末所说的那样，它是一种本能的“战士文化”的产物，适用于所有民族和时代，超越政治?在寻找战争的时间连续体时，我们是否应该强调“基本的历史因素”?在这篇文章中，我们强调了“战争的永续性”论题的相关性，以及政治理性与本能之间二分法的不恰当性。这两种关于战争起源的思想之间的冲突的结果面临着局限性，因为缺乏时间的“尺度游戏”，因此短期方法与宏观历史观点不相容。我们认为，对战争现象的深刻理解必须考虑不同时间尺度上过程之间的相互作用和反馈。
{"title":"Clausewitz, Keegan, and the Big History of Warfare","authors":"D. Barreiros, Daniel Ribera Vainfas","doi":"10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v4i1.4130","url":null,"abstract":"As a social phenomenon, is war subordinate to politics, as Carl von Clausewitz argued in the early nineteenth century, or, instead, is it the product of an instinctive ‘warrior culture’, common to all peoples and times and beyond politics, as John Keegan suggested in the late twentieth? Should we emphasize ‘essential historical elements in the search for a tem-poral continuum in warfare? In this article, we stress the relevance of the ‘perennity of war’ thesis, and the impropriety of a dichotomy between political rationality vs. instinct. The results of the clash between these two strands of thought about the origins of warfare face limitations due to the absence of a temporal ‘play of scales’, so that short-term approaches emerge as incompatible with macro-historical views. We suggest that a deep understanding of the phenomenon of warfare must consider the interaction and the feedback between processes at different time scales.","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115988031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
n Maps of Time, David Christian describes the narrative of Big History as “a modern ‘Dreaming’ – a coherent account of how we were created and how we fit into the scheme of things.”1 Yet, he adds more recently, that narrative “is far from complete, and . . . may need to incorporate the insights of older origin stories about how to live well and how to live sustainably.”2 The discussion of this narrative and how to strengthen it has swirled through every IBHA conference since the first, in 2012. More recently, it was the subject of a special issue of the IBHA Journal. For anyone who wants to understand this discussion more fully, I can’t recommend Nasser Zakariya’s A Final Story highly enough.
在《时间地图》(Maps of Time)一书中，大卫·克里斯蒂安(David Christian)将大历史的叙述描述为“一个现代的‘梦’——一个连贯的叙述，讲述我们是如何被创造出来的，以及我们如何融入事物的格局。”然而，他最近又补充道，这种说法“还远远不够完整，而且……可能需要结合关于如何生活得更好和如何可持续生活的古老起源故事的见解。自2012年首届IBHA会议以来，每次IBHA会议都围绕着这种叙事以及如何加强这种叙事展开讨论。最近，它是IBHA杂志特刊的主题。对于任何想要更全面地理解这一讨论的人，我强烈推荐纳赛尔·扎卡里亚的《最后的故事》。
{"title":"A Cosmological Crisis? A Review of Nasser Zakarayia, The Final Story: Science, Myth, and Beginnings","authors":"K. Baskin","doi":"10.22339/jbh.v3i4.3477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i4.3477","url":null,"abstract":"n Maps of Time, David Christian describes the narrative of Big History as “a modern ‘Dreaming’ – a coherent account of how we were created and how we fit into the scheme of things.”1 Yet, he adds more recently, that narrative “is far from complete, and . . . may need to incorporate the insights of older origin stories about how to live well and how to live sustainably.”2 The discussion of this narrative and how to strengthen it has swirled through every IBHA conference since the first, in 2012. More recently, it was the subject of a special issue of the IBHA Journal. For anyone who wants to understand this discussion more fully, I can’t recommend Nasser Zakariya’s A Final Story highly enough.","PeriodicalId":326067,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Big History","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114684646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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