Zoom Out.

Coined in the 1990s, the term “Big History” refers to the study of history tracing all the way back to humanity’s estimated origin of the universe itself. Necessarily, its scope spans over 14 billion years and areas of focus include the Big Bang and the universe’s continuous expansion thereafter, the death of stars, the formation of the galaxies, the formation of planets, Earth’s formation, the development of life on Earth, and then the development of humanity. As a field of study, Big History is intentionally interdisciplinary as it draws from knowledge gathered by different academic groups such as astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists, biochemists, and archeologists to name a few. By bringing all of these different kinds of knowledge together, big historians aim to discover and assess various patterns and themes present in the universe’s history. So far, one of the themes that has emerged from this study is that everything undergoes some kind of change. This change is driven by changes in types and concentrations of energy present among matter (and likely to be the case even with dark energy and dark matter, which make up the overwhelming majority of the universe’s composition). Another theme that arose from Big History is the one that states that things progress towards an ever-increasing complexity. This is the case if one looks at the macro-history of the universe, in which there was supposedly nothing then an explosion that created all of the complex galaxies and celestial bodies that never cease to evolve and breed even more celestial bodies. This is also the case here on Earth, as the creation of water lead to the creation of many different single-cell organisms which evolved into the bio-diverse living world we know of and came about from.

Big historians greatly differ from other historians in terms of how they view humanity. One key difference is that big historians necessarily place humanity’s history within the framework of the universe’s history. When working within this framework, one is automatically reminded about how new our existence is in relation to the existence of the space in which we exist. On the other hand, many historians begin their timeline not even with the beginnings of humanity (which occurred around 200,000 years ago) but at the origin of civilizations with written records and agriculture. So, their framework is much more narrow as it spans about 5,000 years rather than billions. From this difference in framework and timeline stems the other ways in which big historians differ from others: the amount of importance placed on inter-human interactions. To elaborate, when civilized humanity is the primary focus of study, the wars and alliances and trading patterns of kingdoms and tribes and nation-states are of great significance. From this significance arises the significance of even certain individuals: queens, and politicians, and revolutionaries. Because anyone could argue the historical importance of any one person or collection of people, historians then become segmented and siloed as they specify which particular time period and people within that 5,000 timespan they want to become and expert in. Big historians are on the other side of the spectrum. Rather than zooming in focus as close as even just one person’s adult life, they remain zoomed out — looking at humanity more as a collective whole.

Personally, due to the reality that I am already living through the early stages of anthropogenic climate change, I find the mindset of a big historian very easy to grasp. I would even go so far as to say that I live my life in this ‘zoomed out’ mindset and have been for the past three years since learning about this planet’s degradation. I cannot help but be amazed at how quickly everything has happened and is happening. Take the environmental history of the United States for example. This history can be broken down into four parts: the tribal era, the frontier era, the early conservation era, and the modern era in which the federal government and private groups of citizens play an increasing role in establishing environmental protections. The tribal era refers to the more than 13,000 years in which people now called Native Americans lived on land now called the United States in ways that had a relatively low harmful effect on ecosystems and air and water quality. Then, during the frontier era (1607-1890), Europeans invaded these civilizations, committed one of the largest genocides in history, and started heavily extracting resources from nature to make money and build a new kind of civilization. They generally held the belief that nature is meant to be controlled by humans for our own benefit and that natural resources are so abundant that we could never possibly deplete them. However, many people during this time period were astonished by how quickly people were depleting the natural resources and in response these people created the early conservation movement in this country (1832-1870). One notable figure of this stage of the movement include writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau who wrote detailed accounts about his experiences going into the wilderness areas of the northeast United States and Canada and ruminations about living simply, and harmoniously with nature. Another was preservationist John Muir who made excursions into California’s Yosemite Valley and established Yosemite National Park, and wrote about his excursions into other areas of the western U.S. as well. Arguably the most famous figure of the era was President Theodore Roosevelt, who was responsible for creating the national wildlife refuge system and expanding the national park system greatly during s presidency deemed the Golden Age of Conservation. During the modern era, we see figures arise such as Aldo Leopold who encouraged people to be stewards of the land and appreciate our special role within it. We also witness the devastation caused by many new products and chemicals through biologist Rachel Carson’s influential and shocking work Silent Spring. Also, many government environmental programs were established including the Civilian Conservation Corps (1933), the Soil Conservation Act (1935), the Wilderness Act (1964), and the Environmental Protection Agency (1970).

I believe that the lense of big history could be a new tool of the current U.S. environmentalist movement, which unfortunately because we have changed the land, water, and atmosphere to drastically is also inherently connected to the movement to slow the rate of climate change. It could be a useful approach by climate activists to remind people about our place within the history of the universe, and remind people about how small and new that place is. Perhaps then more and more people would be able to wake up to the reality about how quickly so much life continues to disappear each year and be truly appreciate the billions of years it took to create all this life in the first place. I believe that with this appreciation more people would join the movement to keep this abundance of life thriving. How often do you think about your own place in the universe? How does it make you feel? Why do you think some people would be opposed to thinking this way? WORD COUNT: 1183