“most of human history (chronologically speaking) has taken place in communities quite innocent of state power.” — David Christian Copy Share Image
“John McNeill suggests that “we have probably deployed more energy since 1900 than in all of human history before 1900” — David Christian Copy Share Image
What we normally define as history doesn't interest me. It's a constraint. — David Christian Copy Share Image
I had this feeling that, somehow, we ought to be teaching not just the history of particular nations or particular regions, but… — David Christian Copy Share Image
Modern scientific knowledge appeared piecemeal. Historians wrote about human history; physicists tackled the material world; and biologists studied the world of living… — David Christian Copy Share Image
Unfortunately, historians have become so absorbed in detailed research that they have tended to neglect the job of building larger-scale maps of… — David Christian Copy Share Image
I believe human beings mark a threshold in the development of the planet, of course, but it is only part of the… — David Christian Copy Share Image
Our goal is to see Big History become a normal part of high school curricula. I'd love to see it being taught… — David Christian Copy Share Image
“Trying to look at the whole of the past is, it seems to me, like using a map of the world. No… — David Christian Copy Share Image
If, in schools, we keep teaching that history is divided into American history and Chinese history and Russian history and Australian history,… — David Christian Copy Share Image
If historians don't tell stories at the scales of creation myths, someone else will. — David Christian Copy Share Image
I think what I was after was a unifying story that could bring everything together, that could give me a sense of… — David Christian Copy Share Image
Big History studies the history of everything, offering a way of making sense of our world and our role within it. — David Christian Copy Share Image
Big History's not going to replace existing educational courses. It's not an attack on specialisation. It is simply the argument that specialisation… — David Christian Copy Share Image
You go to the cosmologists and ask how they tell the history of the universe; you go to the geologists, how do… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“no complex, nonlinear system can be adequately described by dividing it up into subsystems or into various aspects, defined beforehand.” — David Christian Copy Share Image
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 Image
“Both animal and human slaves could be controlled best if kept economically and psychically dependent on their owners.” — David Christian Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
