“the elements of a modern creation myth are all around us. It is harmful because it contributes to the subtle but pervasive quality of disorientation in modern life that the pioneering French sociologist Émile Durkheim referred to as “anomie”: the… — David Christian Copy Share Image
Maps of Time attempts to assemble a coherent and accessible account of origins, a modern creation myth. — David Christian Copy Share Image
“It was possible to borrow British technology, and increasingly governments began to promote development. By the end of the nineteenth century, governments and large… — David Christian Copy Share
“the conquests of the Achaemenid and Hellenistic dynasties encouraged commercial and intellectual exchanges reaching from central Asia to India to the western Mediterranean. In… — David Christian Copy Share
“So, as networks expand in size, their potential intellectual synergy increases much faster: “larger and denser populations equal faster technological advance.” — David Christian Copy Share
“typical modern households live in urban environments where they earn incomes through some form of wage work and buy food produced by others. In… — David Christian Copy Share
“no complex, nonlinear system can be adequately described by dividing it up into subsystems or into various aspects, defined beforehand.” — David Christian Copy Share
Every kid goes to school full of questions about meaning. You know, 'What's my place in the universe? What does it mean to be… — David Christian Copy Share
“Both animal and human slaves could be controlled best if kept economically and psychically dependent on their owners.” — David Christian Copy Share
“The modern world is ruled by larger and more impersonal forces, from faceless bureaucracies to abstractions such as “inflation,” or “the rule of law.”… — David Christian Copy Share
“contain into new, durable configurations, which can handle huge energy flows without disintegrating. This, we will see, is the characteristic pattern of all such… — David Christian Copy Share
We, as extremely complex creatures, desperately need to know this story of how the universe creates complexity and why complexity means vulnerability and fragility. — David Christian Copy Share
If, in schools, we keep teaching that history is divided into American history and Chinese history and Russian history and Australian history, we're teaching… — David Christian Copy Share
An egg is a beautiful, sophisticated thing that can create even more sophisticated things, such as chickens. And we know in our heart of… — David Christian Copy Share
“Earth, for example, is made up of oxygen (almost 50 percent) and smaller amounts of iron (19 percent), silicon (14 percent), magnesium (12.5 percent),” — David Christian Copy Share
“most of human history (chronologically speaking) has taken place in communities quite innocent of state power.” — David Christian Copy Share
“what we can see may constitute no more than 10 percent, and perhaps as little as 1 percent, of the matter in the universe.” — David Christian Copy Share
