The Natural Science Underlying Big History

Abstract

Nature's many varied complex systems—including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society—are islands of order within the increasingly disordered Universe. All organized systems are subject to physical, biological, or cultural evolution, which together comprise the grander interdisciplinary subject of cosmic evolution. A wealth of observational data supports the hypothesis that increasingly complex systems evolve unceasingly, uncaringly, and unpredictably from big bang to humankind. These are global history greatly extended, big history with a scientific basis, and natural history broadly portrayed across ∼14 billion years of time. Human beings and our cultural inventions are not special, unique, or apart from Nature; rather, we are an integral part of a universal evolutionary process connecting all such complex systems throughout space and time. Such evolution writ large has significant potential to unify the natural sciences into a holistic understanding of who we are and whence we came. No new science (beyond frontier, nonequilibrium thermodynamics) is needed to describe cosmic evolution's major milestones at a deep and empirical level. Quantitative models and experimental tests imply that a remarkable simplicity underlies the emergence and growth of complexity for a wide spectrum of known and diverse systems. Energy is a principal facilitator of the rising complexity of ordered systems within the expanding Universe; energy flows are as central to life and society as they are to stars and galaxies. In particular, energy rate density—contrasting with information content or entropy production—is an objective metric suitable to gauge relative degrees of complexity among a hierarchy of widely assorted systems observed throughout the material Universe. Operationally, those systems capable of utilizing optimum amounts of energy tend to survive, and those that cannot are nonrandomly eliminated.

Energy Flows in Low-Entropy Complex Systems

“…Either way, energy remains an underlying driver of change, and with rapidly accelerating pace displays a steep upward trend in energy rate density ranging 10 to 3000 J/s/kg-from primitive devices of the industrial revolution (150 ya) to pioneering automobiles (a century ago) to impressive airplanes and computers (past half-century) to today's "smart" jet aircraft. All the numbers and computations in this bullet and the one above come from [3]. Human society and its invented machines are among the most energy-laden systems known, hence plausibly the most complex in the Universe explored thus far.…”

“…The timescale along the abscissa and the color of the bubbles match equivalent parts of Figure 1. Rationale for this plot can be found in an earlier book [1]; updated energies and dates used to make it are taken from a recent review paper [3].…”

“…By contrast, when addressing complexity science generally and practically, I advocate the role of energy, specifically energy flow and its hypothesized complexity metric, "energy rate density." Much research has shown that the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of complex systems can be modeled consistently and uniformly by quantitatively analyzing the way energy is acquired, stored, and expressed by a wide array of systems observed throughout Nature [1,2,3].…”

Finding the time: Exploring a new perspective on students’ perceptions of cosmological time and efforts to improve temporal frameworks in astronomy

“…In turn, some cosmologists have argued for a more objective approach to big history and have developed their own empirical approach, coining it cosmic evolution [80][81][82]. Chaisson [80] argues that big historians approach cosmic evolution from an anthropocentric perspective that suggests the Universe "arose specifically to produce us."…”

Science, Innovation and the Future of Humanity

“…Science and its practitioners have shaped our concepts of the modern world everywhere, at every level of organization, from the individual to all of humanity, and from the subatomic level to the unimaginable scope of the expanding universe [Chaisson, 2014]. We need to reflect at a profound level why misinformation, outright lies, undocumented beliefs and destructive policies are given even the slightest amount of consideration when not accompanied by independently obtained data that support them.…”