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Discover our world's connections, the power of collective learning, and how our universe and world have evolved from incredible simplicity to ever-increasing complexity. Big History takes you on a journey through our modern scientific origin storey, revealing the crucial links between past, present, and future events.
Syllabus :
1. Big History, Critical Thinking, & Transdisciplinarity
- What is Big History?
- What is the relationship between historical & scientific explanation?
- How do we decide what to believe?
- How did our Universe get more complex?
2. The Universe, Stars, and Planets
- Mind-Expanding, not Head-Exploding
- What is the observable evidence for the Big Bang?
- How do we know how stars form?
- Where did the elements come from?
- What is the periodic table?
- Why is Threshold 4 significant?
- How did the solar system form?
- What is our Earth's history and how do we know it?
3. The Evolutionary Epic
- Why is Threshold 5 important?
- Where did life come from?
- How do we get dates for Earth's history?
- How does evolution work?
- How do palaeontologists study the history of life?
- Why is Threshold 6 important?
- Why did our ancestors evolve such unusual abilities?
4. Human History
- How did people live in the Palaeolithic?
- Why is Threshold 7 important?
- Where did writing come from?
- Reading Hieroglyphs
- What were the Silk Roads?
- What were the main changes in agrarian civilizations?
5. Modernity
- What was the Industrial Revolution?
- How did Modernity evolve after the Industrial Revolution?
- How far can globalization go?
- Why is the world economy so integrated?
- Why is Threshold 8 important?
6. The Future
- What might Threshold 9 be?
- How is our climate changing and what does this mean for our future?
- Why is the future of the Universe easier to study than the future of humanity?
- What have we learned from the Big History story?
