For Students

Big History and Collective Learning

Project Overview

Big History, a new perspective originally introduced by Prof. David Christian, tries to provide an evidence-based scientific

narrative of the evolutionary changes from the Big Bang to the present status of human society.

[ See for example:

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history

and https://school.bighistoryproject.com/bhplive ]

It suggests that there may be a unifying scheme behind answers to some fundamental questions like Where do we come from? How does life evolve on earth? Are we, homo sapiens, just one of the many species that have existed on earth, or are we special? What is the most significant difference between us and other species? Dinosaurs dominated the world for over 135 million years – why didn’t they evolve to have cell phones or all the technologies we have developed in merely few hundred thousand years of our presence? Are capitalism and globalization unavoidable consequences of human evolution? Is there an underlying theme in the evolution from the Big Bang to the development of modern
human / nation-based world?

Let’s imagine there is such a theme, can we use it to predict our future? Are we going to develop into an AI-robot-human mixed society as predicted in many science-fiction movies; or are we doomed to self-destruct? How sustainable is the present course of human development?

Let’s imagine there is such a theme, where does it come from? Is there a scientific principle behind it? How universal is the scheme itself? Can the scheme be changed? Or, Are the laws of nature changeable?

[See for example http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3410/03-ever-nf.html ]

These are the questions we want to address in this lecture series, using examples and up-to-date scientific knowledge. We will not be able to provide a definite answer to most questions raised in the lectures. However the questions arising in this series will be worth exploring – we wish some of them may change your future.

Events

Big History and Collective Learning 2016/17
Big History and Collective Learning 2017/18
Prof. David Christian in Hong Kong - Public Lecture on Big History and Student Conference on Humanity, Sustainability and Artificial Intelligence (29 September 2018)

Information

Online Application