HIS 101 CC: BIG HISTORY

CC: From The Big Bang To The Future Of Humanity And The Cosmos - Since the eighteenth century, physicists and astronomers have been piecing together the history of the universe and our solar system; geologists the history of our planet; evolutionary biologists the history of life on Earth; and archaeologists the history of humanity before written records. Realizing this, some historians have breached the walls between history and prehistory, and between the social and natural sciences, to create a continuous narrative account of everything we know about the past: Big History. Using a textbook and an extended theoretical essay written by leading figures in this emerging field, this course focuses on the fundamental forces that have shaped change and continuity across the 13.8 billion years of observable time. By exploring processes and themes common to natural and human history, students will receive basic training for a lifetime practice of situating everything they learn within the complex web of similarities, and differences, between human behavior and natural phenomena. They will also have the tools to develop their own ideas about how best to meet the challenges of the present, and shape the future, for the benefit of humanity and the natural systems upon which all life depends.