Currently, a group of historians is claiming that it might be history that provides the framework for a scientific and evolutionary account of everything. Big History, so named by its foremost practitioner, David Christian, seeks to unite the two cultures under the framework of an elegant story of the universe, a history, in the words of fellow practitioner Fred Spier, “that places human history within the context of cosmic history, from the beginning of the universe up until life on Earth today.” 4 Big history, it would seem, is not only a science, but the science, combining the fields of astrophysics, cosmology, geology, geography, biology, archaeology, anthropology, and history, not to mention the various sub-disciplines involved, while the . . .

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