A rigorous periodization of ‘big’ history

‘Big’ history is the time between the Big Bang and contemporary technological life on Earth. The stretch of big history can be considered as a series of developments in systems that manage ever-greater levels of energy flow, or thermodynamic disequilibrium. Recent theory suggests that step-wise changes in the work accomplished by a system can be explained using steady-state non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Major transitions in big history can therefore be rigorously defined as transitions between non-equilibrium thermodynamic steady-states (or NESSTs). The time between NESSTs represents a historical period, while larger categories of time can be identified by empirically discovering breaks in the rate of change in processes underlying macrohistorical trends among qualities of NESSTs. Two levels of periodization can be identified through this procedure. First, there are two major eons: cosmological and terrestrial, which exhibit qualitatively different kinds of historical scaling laws with respect to NESST duration and the gaps between NESSTs: the first eon decelerating, the second accelerating. Accelerating rates of historical change are achieved during the Terrestrial Eon by the invention of information inheritance processes. Second, eras can also be defined within Earth history by differences in the scaling of energy flow improvement per NESST. This is because each era is based on a different kind of energy source: the material era depends on nuclear fusion, the biological era on metabolism, the cultural era on tools, and the technological era on machines. Periodizing big history allows historians to uncover the mechanisms which trigger the innovations and novel organisations that spur thermodynamic transitions, as well as the mechanisms which keep historical processes under control. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.