Big History: From Big Bang To The Future

Catalog description

Big History weaves evidence and insights from many disciplines across 13.8 billion years into a single, cohesive, science-based origin story. The concept arose from a desire to go beyond specialized and self-contained fields of study to grasp history as a whole. Big History explores how we are connected to everything around us and where we may be heading. It provides a foundation for thinking about the future and the changes that are reshaping our world. Permission of instructor or department required. Typically offered Fall. Course Learning Outcomes 1. Think across scales, from the massive expanse of the Universe to the smallest of atoms. 2. Think across both temporal as well as physical scales, looking at problems and trends through the lenses of personal, family, community, national, human, and geologic. They must also consider how scale is connected to perspective. 3. Integrate multiple disciplines. Big History encourages the use of interdisciplinary thinking and methodologies. Students should look to integrate the insights of multiple disciplines when analyzing and drawing conclusions about historical information, including social, physical, and natural sciences. 4. Develop an awareness of the focus of a variety of scholarly disciplines and understand the types of questions they ask, the types of conclusions that they draw, and the types of evidence they use to support their findings. 5. Make and test claims. 6. Develop a thoughtful, consistent, and rigorous approach to engaging with new ideas and information. 7. Apply techniques in their writing and other academic discourse. View Class Schedule