Big History: The longest 'durée'

Abstract

Big history surveys the past on all scales up to those of cosmology. It answers questions explored in traditional creation stories and universal histories, but it does so with the methods and the evidence of modern scientific scholarship. Though still marginal within historical scholarship, big history is attracting increasing interest and holds out the promise of a fruitful unification of different disciplines that study the past at many different scales. This paper discusses the emergence of big history and its current status and role within historical scholarship.