Big+History

Bill Gates' Big Historyproject is presented as an "Introduction to Everything." It's a combined effort by Gates and historian David Christian. It's worth spending some time at the Big History project website, noticing the structure used. There are sections on timelines - these run from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago to today, on various scales - and course themes. Notice the section on Mapping to Standards. US and Australian standards are mentioned, but there is nothing about Canadian standards yet. This is presumably because no Canadians have yet sought to get involved in the project. (Note: David Christian was a professor at Macquarrie University in Australia for 30 years, so there is an obvious Aussie connection to the project.)

There is more on big history as an approach (not just David Christian's program) at [|Wikipedia]. Wikipedia suggests that big history is a reaction to the remarkable specialization and differentiation of disciplines that occurred in the twentieth century.
 * To illustrate that //differentiation//, consider what has happened in Psychology: William James probably stayed up-to-date on pretty much all the research done in his day (roughlyl 1870 - 1910) on topics that we would today call psychological. No-one can do that today - it is not even possible to keep up-to-date on sub-sub-specialties. For example, no-one can read all that is published on //Psychology//, on the sub-specialty //Cognitive Psychology//, or the sub-sub-specialty //Visual Attention//.

Big history, then, can be seen as a strong reaction against that specialization and differentiation, based on the argument that it (differentiation) prevents us from seeing important patterns concerning the relationships among ideas in different disciplines.
 * For example, it has been argued that psychology has traditionally looked to the physical sciences for its organizing metaphors: Freud's idea that repressed feelings are "under pressure" and will at some point "burst through" to consciousness reflected the science of thermodynamics. Behaviorism presented a psychological version of the sort of clock-work universe described by Isaac Newton, and modern neural network models are obviously inspired by computer science. Thus, for psychologists, seeing the "big picture" has been important.

That inter-disciplinary communication, however, is typically one-way. Psychologists vis-a-vis the physical sciences are a bit like Canadians living next to the USA. We notice much of what is going on down there, we have access to their pop culture and poltical movements, but they typically don't notice us very often. Similarly, while psychology takes its metaphors from the physical sciences, the physical sciences in general don't pay much attention to ideas originating in psychology. Big history is motivated at least in part by the idea that all of us, in all disciplines, can benefit from seeing "the big picture" of what is going on in other areas.

Perhaps "big picture" thinking is something that should be taught starting when learners are very young. Big History might be a big step in that direction.