History, Big History, & Metahistory

History, Big History, & Metahistory

What is history anyway? Most people would say itâ€™s what happened in the past, but how far back does the past extend? To the first written sources? To what other forms of evidence reveal about pre-literate civilizations? What does that term meanâ€”an empire, a nation, a city, a village, a family, a lonely hermit somewhere? Why stop with people: shouldnâ€™t history also comprise the environment in which they exist, and if so on what scale and how far back? And as long as weâ€™re headed in that direction, why stop with the earth and the solar system? Why not go all the way back to the Big Bang itself? Thereâ€™s obviously no consensus on how to answer these questions, but even asking them raises another set of questions about history: who should be doing it? Traditionally trained historians, for whom archives are the only significant source? Historians willing to go beyond archives, who must therefore rely on, and to some extent themselves become, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, archeologists? But if theyâ€™re also going to take environments into account, donâ€™t they also have to know something about climatology, biology, paleontology, geology, and even astronomy? And how can they do that without knowing some basic physics, chemistry, and mathematics? This inaugural volume of the SFI Press (the new publishing arm of the Santa Fe Institute) attempts to address these questions via thoughtful essays on history written by distinguished scholarsâ€”including Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mannâ€”from across a wide range of fields.
Country USA
Manufacturer SFI Press
Binding Paperback
EANs 9781947864023
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Manufacturer	SFI Press
Binding	Paperback
EANs	9781947864023
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

History, Big History, & Metahistory

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