Routledge Companion to Big History

Craig Benjamin is a Professor of History at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, USA, where he researches and teaches big history and ancient Eurasian history. Recent books include Big History: Between Nothing and Everything (co-authored with David Christian and Cynthia Stokes Brown, 2014); and Empires of Ancient Eurasia. The First Silk Roads Era 100 BCE – 250 CE (2018). Esther Quaedackers is a Lecturer in Big History at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where she has been developing, coordinating, and teaching big history courses for over a decade. She is the inventor of the ‘little big history’ approach, which is a research and teaching method in which small subjects are connected to aspects of big history in order to generate creative new ideas about how these subjects came to be the way they are.David Baker is Lecturer of Big History at Macquarie University, Australia, and is the first scholar worldwide to achieve a PhD in that field. He is co-designer of Big History School (three K–12 curricula), Big History: Connecting Knowledge on Coursera, and contributor to the Big History Project. He was scriptwriter for two seasons of Crash Course: Big History with over 12 million views on Youtube. He has produced numerous research articles, chapters, and edited volumes, including works in the Journal of World History and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Big history is the most innovative and intellectually daring kind of historical scholarship on offer. It is the historical genre that can be used to appraise the biggest challenges that we face as a species, such as our burgeoning numbers, our relationships with other species, and the way we have so far engaged with the natural environment. This volume showcases the remarkable potential of the field. It is especially useful because it brings together Big History’s leading figures, as well as important fellow travellers in the social and natural sciences. And all of them bring to this volume their ‘best game’. Nick Doumanis, University of New South Wales, Sydney, AustraliaBig History is a rapidly evolving research and teaching field that seeks to unite natural and human history into a single compelling narrative. To capture the current state of this scholarship, the editors of The Routledge Companion to Big History have assembled and thematically organized twenty-one chapters, each authored by a leading proponent. For the reader interested in, or simply curious about, big history, this volume is the perfect entrée. Kevin Jon Fernlund, University of Missouri – St. Louis, USA

• Introductory chapters Introduction to The Routledge Companion to Big HistoryCraig Benjamin, Esther Quaedackers and David Baker1 What is big history?David ChristianPART IBig history and science2 Big history and the study of time: the underlyingtemporalities of big historyBarry Wood3 Big history and astronomy – space is big: the Fermiparadox: its relevance to big history and the human raceJonathan Markley4 Big history and macro-evolution: evolutionary principlesand mechanisms at biological and social phases of thebig historyLeonid E. Grinin, Andrey Korotayev and Alexander MarkovPART IIBig history, social science and the humanities5 Big history and anthropology: our place in themultiverse: anthropology, civilization and big historyBarry H. Rodrigue6 Big history and archaeology: archaeology is big historyBrian Fagan7 Big history and philosophy: philosophical foundationsof big history: why big history makes senseArmando Menéndez Viso8 Big history and political science: science, the deep past,and the politicalLowell Gustafson9 Big history and historiography: deep tides and swirlingfoam: the influence of macro-historical trends on micro-historicaleventsDavid Baker10 Big history and critical theory: science, history and whytheory mattersDavid Blanks11 Big history, morality and religionCynthia Stokes BrownPART IIILittle big histories12 A case for little big historiesEsther Quaedackers13 The little big history of the Nalón River, Asturias, SpainOlga García-Moreno, Diego Álvarez-Laó, Miguel Arbizu,Eduardo Dopico, Eva García-Vázquez, Joaquín García Sansegundo,Montserrat Jiménez-Sánchez, Laura Miralles, Ícaro Obeso,Ángel Rodríguez-Rey, Marco de la Rasilla Vives,Luis Vicente Sánchez Fernández, Luis Rodríguez Terente,Luigi Toffolatti and Pablo Turrero14 Sketch of a little big history of Private E.E. Benjaminand the Great WarCraig BenjaminPART IVTeaching big history15 The Big History Project in AustraliaTracy Sullivan16 Big history teaching in KoreaSeohyung Kim17 Crossing thresholds: using big history to meet challengesin teaching and learning in the United StatesRobert B. BainPART VBig history and the future18 Big history and the future of technologyLeonid E. Grinin and Anton L. Grinin19 Big history and the SingularityAkop P. Nazaretyan20 Underground metro systems: a durable geological proxyof rapid urban population growth and energy consumptionduring the AnthropoceneMark Williams, Matt Edgeworth, Jan Zalasiewicz,Colin N. Waters, Will Steffen, Alexander P. Wolfe,Nicholas J. Minter, Alejandro Cearreta, Agnieszka Gałuszka,Peter Haff, John McNeill, Andrew Revkin, Daniel deB. Richter,Simon Price, and Colin Summerhayes21 The coming energy transition: what comes afterfossil-fueled civilization?Joseph VorosIndex