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One of my favourite books. Maps of Time is a fascinating history textbook. What makes this book unique is in the telling of history. Christian's approach is through an emerging academic discipline known as Big History. Christian examines the moment of the Big Bang to the present and uses a multi-disciplinary approach based on combining various scientific ideologies and the humanities. The Maps of Time recounts the events of a changing universe by employing astrophysics, particle physics, paleobi...
David Christian's book covers the entire history of the universe - the Big Bang to the universe's eventual descent into darkness - in 500 pages, laying out a text book of "big history." Big history is a response to a perception that history as a field has been becoming increasingly fragmented, as specialists veer off into their own corners and study minute details while the big picture often gets lost in the shuffle. It's a fair point.Christian responds to this with a demand for synthesis, into
Let there be no misunderstanding: this is a really interesting book, very elaborate and thoroughly researched, offering a pioneer study into Big History. I think it is original in this sense that, with the exception maybe of the Amsterdam researcher Fred Spier, David Christian was the first to offer a real bird-eye view of history, starting with the history of the universe (Big Bang and all that stuff), going to the formation of the earth, its climate and its many inhabitants, reaching out into
I was just glancing through the other comments as I finished reading this this morning, and there was one about how this was a well written book but it was obvious that the author wasn't Christian, and therefore was wrong/the commentator didn't agree with him because other books about "big history" have been written by Christians that fit the Biblical story and have "science" to back them up. To them I say, this book was not written to support the Christian/Creationism/Intelligent Design worldvi...
The edition of Maps of Time that I read was published in 2004, and I thought it needed a revision to update some information, and a better proofreader to check some of the author’s statements. For instance, when the book was written the estimated age of the universe was 13 billion years, but since then additional research has pushed that to 13.8 billion. Similarly, Homo erectus was once believed to have left Africa around 700,000 years ago, but in recent years remains have been found in China th...
Beautiful, it sweeps from the origins of the universe to the very present, from the atomic to the cosmic, but never loses the perspective that grips you in tears of awe, tears that are not blinding but the birthing-sweat of sight itself
David Christian's provides an introduction to so-called Big History -- a type of history that the author defines as interdisciplinary in nature and one which seeks to find "an underlying unity beneath the various accounts of the past told in different historically oriented disciplines. Big History studies the past across physics, astronomy, geology, biology, and human history. As it does so, it seeks common themes, paradigms and methods..." Put differently, it endeavors to provide a modern, secu...
Is the written historical record enough to explain the history of civilization? David Christian would argue that it isn't, Maps of Time is a condensed, single volume argument based on his introductory lectures on the topic of “Big History”. Big History as defined by Christian is the history of everything on the largest possible scale, from the beginning of the universe to its bitter end. By this definition Big History covers not only the written record, but also prehistory and even prehuman hist...
I had to understand more math and physics than I would have liked, but what are you gonna do.
It took more than two months to read this 600-page book, intensively taking notes. That is to say that it really is worth it. I'm a graduate in history myself, and I like to read detailed monographs, but at the same time I'm very fond of authors that try to see the broader picture. "Big History" (as Christian propagates) requires courage and a talent to filter a storyline out of the chaotic mass of details, whilst respecting a thorough accurateness and a sense of nuance. In this book Christian h...
The idea of Big History sounds intriguing, but after reading most of this book (I admit I could not finish it --- I did not enjoy the writing style at all), I am unconvinced that it has anything much to offer that one cannot get from reading the basic source material alone. Indeed, the book feels to me like a very detailed summary of a bunch of introductory books in science, anthropology, and sociology. I'd prefer a shorter, more focussed book that clearly emphasizes what is good and different a...
Read for school. Only had to read until pg 491 + Appendix 1.
Big History is a synthesis of knowledge from different scholarly disciplines that makes for one fascinating story about our universe. Most people will probably be familiar with a lot of the information in the book, but it’s when that information is put into a new contexts that you start seeing things differently, and that’s what I enjoyed the most. Also, I really enjoyed professor Christian’s explanation of the evolution of the universe, from the simplest structures to growing levels of complexi...
This is an interesting change of reference from a historical perspective combining cosmology, astronomy, geology, microbiology, evolutionary theory, archaeology, politics, religion, economics, and history into one big area of contiguous study based upon much larger timescales. Though it takes from many disciplines, it provides for an interesting, fresh, and much needed perspective on who humans are and their place in the world. I'd highly recommend this to any general reader as early as they can...
The history of the world in less than 510 pages, and starting with the Big Bang. Humans don't appear until around page 110. Still a very interesting book. Of course, he misses a lot of the high points of history. Instead, as he describes the the forces that created the universe, he surveys the forces that have created the world's cultures. Centering mostly on the economical, giving the book a somewhat Marxist feel. It is an interesting contrast to the very specific studies of history. I read it
Exciting approach to the study of history, taken all the way back to the beginning of the universe, basing the history of everything on increasing complexity leading up to modern society. THIS IS HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE TAUGHT!!! I read the book while watching the author's series of lectures on Big History for The Great Courses (formerly known as The Teaching Company......wonderful outfit, by the way). If science had been taught in this manner while I was in school, I most likely would not have sp...
Monumental in every way. A tome to represent the entirety of history - from big bang to our possible future. Like all great historians, Christian, is a storyteller with his own set of motifs. The underlying exploration of history as evolving complexity was one such theme and his discussion of the dance between chaos and complexity in the appendix was fascinating. Looking at history as emergence in the language of complexity theory is new to me but makes good sense. Complexity theory is popping u...
This is a monumental work, and deserves much more credit (it still remains obscure).
You can't knock someone writing a history book covering 13 odd billion years - even if he does describe that as "a brief exuberant springtime" compared to an "inconceivably distant future"."Big History" is a fairly new subdiscipline which attempts to describe historical development from the "big bang" onward. I'm not sure why this book (authored by a - ahem - big name in the "field") isn't just called big history - perhaps because the publishers were worried that readers would constantly say it
This is a great book for parents. Look, at some point your kid is going to ask you a whole series of brutally hard questions: "Dad, where did the universe come from?" "Dad, what made the moon?" "Dad, where did cows live before they lived on farms?" And, as a reasonably well educated Dad or Mom, you kind of think there is probably an answer out there, but it's hard to put your finger on it. This here is the book for you.The book is unabashedly ambitious, and in just over 400 pages covers the enti...