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Big History

Big History is an academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. Big History resists specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approach based on combining numerous disciplines from science and the humanities,[1][2][3][4] and explores human existence in the context of this bigger picture.[5] It integrates studies of the cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity using empirical evidence to explore cause-and-effect relations,[6][7] and is taught at universities[8] and primary and secondary schools[9][10] often using web-based interactive presentations.[11][12][13]

This article is about the academic discipline. For the TV series, see Big History (TV series). For the project, see Big History Project.

Historian David Christian has been credited with coining the term "Big History" while teaching one of the first such courses at Macquarie University.[6][8][14] An all-encompassing study of humanity's relationship to cosmology[15] and natural history[16] has been pursued by scholars since the Renaissance, and the new field, Big History, continues such work.

of Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

David Christian

of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Eric Chaisson

of the University of California, Berkeley, California

Walter Alvarez

of Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan

Craig Benjamin

of Dominican University of California, San Rafael, California

Cynthia Stokes Brown

of the Center for Big History and System Forecasting of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

Andrey Korotayev

of Birkbeck College London, UK

Ian Crawford

 – Group of historians

Annales school

 – Clock designed to keep time for 10,000 years

Clock of the Long Now

 – Concept of geologic time

Deep time

 – television series

Deep Time History

 – Free, online collaborative encyclopedia that documents species

Encyclopedia of Life

 – means of studying ecological systems in which the relationship between all of the components is of great complexity

Hierarchy theory

 – Set of phenomena emerging from pre-existing phenomena

Integrative level

 – Long-term trends in world history

Macrohistory

Scale (analytical tool)

 – Research strategy that crosses disciplinary boundaries

Transdisciplinarity

ChronoZoom website

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Teaching & Researching Big History: Exploring a New Scholarly Field, International Big History Association, 2014

Cosmic evolution website, a multi-media web site with many video/animation interactive features for both introductory learners and technical experts

Official website for the International Big History Association

Big History Site website, multilingual

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Co-evolution in Big History - a transdisciplinary and biomimetic introduction to the Sustainable Development Goals