Talk:Big History

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Shouldn't this be at Big history?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 22:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

No "big history" is a general term whereas "Big History" is a discreet field of study and is a proper noun, like as in the World Wide Web or Long Tail. --Stbalbach 23:13, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I created a redirect from Big history, though. I hope people don't mind, it's simply quite logical that you type in big history to get this article. If there's something else that could be called big history, create a disambiguation page instead. --Sterio 12:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 intellectual synthesis 2 the book list 3 No Criticism Section? 4 Intellectual Synthesis

[edit] intellectual synthesis

Works or work of intellectual synthesis, such E.O. Wilson's Consilience, might be good to link here. That's what comes to mind for me. I'll have to look (later) to see what else Wikipedia already has on such themes. Any objections or suggestions? - (a user who ought to get around to making an account)

So long as they considered "Big History" and can be cited as such. Keep in mind it is a distinct area of historiography with a distinct tradition, "Big History" is a proper noun (capitalized), not a general description. -- Stbalbach 20:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The term intellectual synthesis encompasses a larger idea here, and I made a section specifically to discuss how we might better address the hierarchy of thought in this subject and it's related subjects. I don't see much on WP relating to this general grande theme, so it deserves attention. It's an exciting trend in scholarship and study, and merits a comprehensive discussion here. Afterall, the subject itself is about being comprehensive and sweeping in its view.Thelastemperor 04:21, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the book list

I'm going to go through the book list and toss a lot of them out. Some of the books currently listed may take broad approaches to their subjects, but Big History is not a generic term, it does not apply to any wider-than-average view of history. Some of them are also just confusing, and appear to be not related by any standard (e.g., the christian theology one...) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.82.126 (talk) 22:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] No Criticism Section?

Surely there must be some criticism of the attempt to expand the discipline of "History" out until it includes everything. -- LKS 6/20/06

[edit] Intellectual Synthesis

A previous member cited the term "intellectual synthesis". This is a common theme. Perhaps we should create an article for that subject, so that we could relate the larger, more general topic to the related sub topics? For example: Big History is one example of intellectual synthesis, but I'm sure there are many others. This also ties into multidisciplinarianism, right? That should also be reflected.

Finally, I've heard some other terms that somewhat relate to Big History. Namely, "Historical Dynamics", "Historical Trajectory", and a few terms I can't remember which were mentioned by Jared Diamond in his work 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. This subject seems marked also by a desire to bring together the totality of human history along with the knowledge and related fields necessary to convey that knowledge. As such, it has much in common with using a systems theory approach to explore geopolitical causal chains and relationships. Thelastemperor 16:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes please realize this article is trying to be very focused on the field of Big History - it is not an essay on "thinking big about history". It is about the discrete historical school that has specific authors and books and university classes associated with it. Just about every contributor to this article, since I first wrote it, has added information on everything *but* the field of Big History - through analogy or association - arguably original research. Also I would really rather see the terms you linked in the "See Also" have articles and not be red links. -- Stbalbach 13:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC)