Themes

Radiocarbon dating helps scientists understand the age of rocks as well as the Earth and the Solar System.

Professor David Christian argued that the recent past is only understandable in terms of the "whole 14-billion-year span of time itself."Big History seeks to retell the "human story" in light of scientific advances by such methods as radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis. In some instances, it uses mathematical modeling to explore interactions between long-term trends in sociological systems, and it has led to the coining of the term cliodynamics by Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut to describe how mathematical models might explain events such as the growth of empires, social discontent, and the collapse of nations. It explores the mix of individual action and social and environmental forces, according to one view. While conventional history might see an invention such as sharper spear points as being deliberately created by some smart humans, and then copied by other humans, a Big History perspective might see sharper spear points as accidental, and then natural evolutionary processes enabled their users to be better hunters, even if they did not understand why this was the case.It seeks to discover repeating patterns during the 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang. For example, one pattern is that "chaos catalyzes creativity", such as the asteroid impactwiping out the dinosaurs.