Big history is a field of historical study that examines history on large scales across long time frames through a multidisciplinary approach, focusing on both the history of the non-human world and on major adaptations and alterations in the human experience. It seeks to understand the integrated history of the cosmos, earth, life, and humanity, using the best available empirical evidence and scholarly methods. It arose as a distinct field in the late 1980s and is related to, but distinct from, world history, as the field examines history from the beginning of time to the present day. In some respects, the field is thus similar to the older universal history.
Read more about Big History: Description, International Big History Association
Famous quotes containing the words big and/or history:
“Kicking the heart
with pain’s big boots running up and down
the intestines like a motorcycle racer.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)