Presenters at the 2023 IBHA Conference, "Humanity on a Finite Planet: A Big History Perspective" | ||||
Abel A. Alves |
The Biohistory of Feminism | |||
Abel Alves is the author of The Animals of Spain: An Introduction to Imperial Perceptions and Human Interaction with Other Animals, 1492-1826 (Brill, 2011), Brutality and Benevolence: Human Ethology, Culture, and the Birth of Mexico (Greenwood, 1996), “Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World” (Oxford Bibliographies, 2017), and articles in The Sixteenth Century Journal and other publications. Alves was the first recipient of the Miriam Chrisman Award of the Society for Reformation Research. In 1997, he received Ball State's Hurley Goodall Distinguished Faculty Award. In 2000, he was awarded BSU's Lawhead Award for teaching in the University Core Curriculum. In 2016, he was invited to present on his research at University College London’s international symposium “Animals in Visual Hispanism.” Among his forthcoming works are: “Domestication: Coevolution,” in Handbook of Historical Animal Studies, ed. Brett Mizelle, Mieke Roscher, and André Krebber (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021); and “Iberia’s Imagined Elephant: Animal Behavior through a Human Prism in the Sixteenth Century,” Romance Notes 60:3 (Fall/Winter 2020). |
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Max Barnett | 6 Steps to the Anthropocene: Mapping Complexity from Foragers to the Anthropocene | |||
This paper will present and justify both the metrics and levels of complexity in human societies. It will also examine previous attempts to build similar models in Big History and assess the challenges of creating and applying such a model. Finally, the paper will argue for the necessity of such an approach in connecting the past to the present and future. In particular, the paper will demonstrate how the model for large scale comparison in the past can be used to make projections and inform policy decisions in the Anthropocene. Maximillian Barnett is a PhD Student, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He currently teaches and aids in curriculum development in the fields of world history and law. He graduated with a Masters of Research in Big History and writes on the fields of demography, geography, anthropology, world history, and future studies. The current working title for his PhD is The Fork in the Road: Mapping Alternative Responses of Human Societies to Threats to their Complexity |
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Daniel Barreiros | Social Classes and Social Cognition in Capitalism: The enmeshment of Social Institutions and Human Ethology | |||
International Order and Cognitive Evolution: a Big History approach to the Concert of Europe (1815-1848) Daniel Barreiros is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Professor at the Comparative History Graduate Program (PPGHC-UFRJ). He is also a researcher at the Bioethics and Applied Ethics Center. He received a PhD in Social History from the Fluminense Federal University, Niterói, Brazil. Daniel is specialist (“lato sensu”) in History of the International Relations (State University of Rio de Janeiro, UERJ), and is a U.S. Department of State Alumni from the Study of the US Institute on United States Foreign Policy (Research Fellow at the Department of Political Sciences and International Relations, University of Delaware). He is a member of the Board of Trustees and Vice-President of the International Big History Association (IBHA). His research is centered on the Big History of intersocial conflict and cooperation, which includes geopolitics and world-system analysis in a complexity and thermodynamic perspective. |
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Ken Baskin | The Practical Application of Complexity Science to Enhance Big History. | |||
Ken Baskin is an independent researcher whose work integrates insights from complexity science, neuro-anthropology, and big history. After earning a PhD in English Literature in 1977, he spent fifteen years writing public-relations material for major firms. His books include Corporate DNA (1998), an examination of how to think about organizations as living things rather than just mechanisms, and The Axial Ages of World History (2014), an exploration of the similarities between the Axial Age and Modernity that he co-wrote with Moscow anthropologist Dmitri Bondarenko. Ken is currently reinterpreting religion as a way that human groups can know and adapt to the powerful forces that surround us. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. |
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Carol J. Blakney | The Biohistory of Feminism | |||
Carol Blakney received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Massachusetts in 1982, then continued on to do art history research at Mount Holyoke College, becoming project manager for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1990s, published in 1993. She began working with Abel Alves on biohistory in 1994. From 2001 to 2006, she organized an international network of academics and activists to provide free community-specific research on environmental issues and co-developed an educational website with Catherine Kavassalis. In 2012, she opened Carol Blakney Designs at The National Stationary Show in New York and illustrated the Christmas cover for the Bas Bleu catalogue. She continues to lecture on environmental issues and biohistory. |
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Felipe Blois | Civilization and Technology: antientropic concepts, tools and consequences | |||
Felipe Blois holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (2014). His areas of interest are economic history and economic development, focusing on historical processes of industrialization, technological development, and the role of the state and society in promoting these fields. He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Economics at UFRJ, developing the thesis "The California School and the Great Divergence: A Perspective from the Global South". |
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Barry Borgerson | Conquering Automatic Human Activities to Construct Threshold 9 | |||
The mechanisms of our automatic activities are frustratingly elusive because we cannot directly observe how they operate internally. However, we have a specific, extremely powerful type of involuntary activity that in addition to being elusive, is chronically illusive – it routinely deceives us. This mechanism produces our certainty illusions. These obscure mental processes create intense certainties or beliefs because that is how people experience them. They produce illusions in people because they operate independent of realities outside of their mind. Specific incarnations of this enigmatic mental mechanism include problem-solving foundations that we refer to as worldviews and paradigms, organizational and societal cultures, individual attitudes, political and religious beliefs, group affinities and prejudices, and amazingly inaccurate self-images. Colloquially, we also know this mysterious phenomenon as the “box,” which we often lament that we have trouble thinking outside of. With this new human-capability view, Threshold 7 becomes the advent of robust language abilities. The emergence of language made many advances possible, such as the capability to produce and propagate agriculture, other specialized skills, and complex societies including empires. We can usefully visualize this threshold as the transition point between physical-world-complexity and mental-world-capability criteria because biological evolution also produced the brain structures that made complex language possible. We create a new form of empowerment to determine our future when we transfer our focus from the tangible brain to the intangible mind at this transition point because biological evolution did not play a role in human progress beginning with Threshold 8. Threshold 8 becomes the ability to understand and manage the physical world through leveraging the latent capabilities of our thinking mode, which had been previously imprisoned because it lacked an empowering worldview. The visible part of this transformation manifested as the Science Revolution in the West. However, behind the scenes, a new worldview indirectly emerged that provided the hidden mental foundation that made science processes work effectively. Awakening our slumbering abilities to solve important problems for the physical world produced many technological wonders that have provided enormous benefits. However, we have now passed the tipping point where digital technologies are creating problems for which we increasingly cannot manage their human ramifications. We have unknowingly fallen into a trap because the accelerating mismatch between our capabilities to solve problems in the physical and mental worlds is creating a systemic descent in many areas of our lives. Threshold 9 can become the desperately needed transformation to understand and manage the mental world through creating a general theory of our automatic mode and specifically certainty illusions in their many manifestations. This will overcome the debilitating abilities mismatch that currently plagues us. Threshold 7 had only one controlling, supernaturalistic worldview. Transforming to Threshold 8 required constructing a naturalistic worldview to empower managing the physical world, which indirectly and imperceptibly emerged and operated alongside a religious worldview that continued to enable people’s spiritual world. Threshold 9 will directly and consciously add a third overarching worldview to provide the foundation to meet our escalating need to comprehensively understand and systematically manage our mental world. Therefore, we can escape former constraints and create amazing new capabilities by recognizing that overarching worldviews determine recent thresholds, and these reside in the previously mysterious certainty-illusion part of the mind. The presenter, Dr. Barry Borgerson, just completed a manuscript for a book, tentatively titled Growing Up Is Hard to Do! – The Urgent Need for the West to Transform, that outlines the only general theory of the mind that provides the means to solve many types of currently intractable problems across diverse domains. Although it focuses on developments in the West to narrate historical progress, it deals with the maturation of the human species so will have widespread applicability. It creates potent tools to understand and manage currently enigmatic issues in social systems including persistently deteriorating self-governing systems, inadequate business culture-change processes, untapped opportunities in education, deteriorating shared values, and the slouching of many religious groups away from positive purposes. It also creates powerful new ways to manage dysfunctional personal-responsibility issues including tragic drug-addictions, including voters and others succumbing to digital-technology-enhanced manipulations, and rampant prisoner recidivism. The Big History formulation is a critical mechanism Growing Up uses to compare the likely magnitude of the consequences of the now-possible human-activities revolution to systematically manage the mental world to the monumental consequences of the Science Revolution to methodically manage the physical world. This development provides an opportunity for members of the Big History community who focus on human progress to integrate more into mainstream history by identifying overarching worldviews stealthily buried within the certainty-illusion part of the mind as the mechanism responsible for discontinuous human progress. This perspective creates potent insights into recent thresholds that could enable some Big History participants to become heroic figures in the first explicit construction of a new threshold. Stated more urgently, the Big History framework provides a great way to see the massive importance of this potential new threshold. This is why it is so crucial for the Big History project to switch threshold criteria to human capabilities starting with Threshold 7 because that view empowers us to realize that Threshold 8 was inherently unstable, so the status quo is not sustainable. We will either ascend to Threshold 9, which will maintain the benefits of Threshold 8 and add amazing unanticipated new benefits, or suffer the continued deterioration of the fruits of Threshold 8. The manuscript provides a comprehensive theory that models mental aspects of human nature to overcome many chronic problems, including the tragic impending collapse of self-governing systems. It paves the way to a future of reliable repeated successes and systematic improvements to well-being – as we launch Big History Threshold 9! |
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Andrey M. Burovsky | The most general patterns of Big History | |||
Born in 1955 in the city of Krasnoyarsk. PhD since 1987. Professor since 1996. Since 2005 I have been living in St. Petersburg.
Member of the Writers' Union. Member of the Union of Scientists. |
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David Christian | Big History and Future Stories | |||
His publications include: |
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Mark Ciotola | Resource-Based Predecessor and Parallel Schools of Thought to Big History | |||
Mark develops resource-based case studies and models of historical societies. He is a lecturer at San Francisco State University. Recent works include: Workshop: Characterizing Historical Macro-Material Utilizing Satellite Imagery, Remote Sensing and GIS, World History Association Annual Conference, Milwaukee, June 2018. “Using thermodynamic potentials as the prime driver of historical processes”, International Big History Association Conference—Building Big History, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, 14-17 July 2016. Workshop: Characterizing Historical Macro-Material Utilizing Satellite Imagery, Remote Sensing and GIS, World History Association Annual Conference, Milwaukee, June 2018. Emergy and Efficiency Analysis of Historical Bubbles, Emergy Synthesis 10 Conference Proceedings (U. of Florida), 1 June 2019. “Workshop: Feeding Empires—Quantitative, Digital & Graphic Simulations for History Using Food Cases”, World History Association Annual Conference, 22 – 23-25 June 2022. “Irreversible Processes in History”, World History Association Annual Conference, Remote, Bilbao, Spain, June 23-25, 2022. “Modeling Historical Dynasties as Emergent, Dissipative Mechanisms”, Thermodynamics 2.0 Conference, International Association for the Integration of Science and Engineering, Boone, North Carolina, July 19, 2022. “Panel: Unity of Sciences”, Chair, Thermodynamics 2.0 Conference, International Association for the Integration of Science and Engineering, Boone, North Carolina, July 20, 2022. “A Comparison of Emergy, Exergy, Entropy and Carbon Accounting: Histories, Definitions, Methodologies, Significance and Synergies”, Emergy Synthesis 11 Conference Proceedings (U. of Florida), 12–14 January 2023. Education: J.D., University of New Hampshire. B.A., Economics from University of Wisconsin-Madison. B.A. Physics & MBA, San Francisco State University. Graduate Certificate in Space Sciences from University of Southern Australia. |
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Adalberto Codetta | 'Big History' and “Global Civics” | |||
Initiated by the University of Pavia in physics, mathematics and automatic information processing: the combined use of head and hands in the laboratory; the mysterious correspondence between processes in nature and logical deductive processes in mathematical models. OPPI's reflection on the relational and emotional aspects of learning. The pioneering operational search for psycho-pedagogical models appropriate to the computer labs that were appearing in schools. I have taught maths, physics and computer science in secondary schools, and carried out educational research and training. I have also coordinated action research at national level. I have been a school principal. I am currently involved in introducing the content of Big History into schools. |
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Lady Mary Felizziety J. Daguay | Finite Resources, Infinite Greed: Deconstructing the Infrastructural Progress in the Philippines | |||
The focus of the paper is to re-examine infrastructural progress in the Philippines and deconstruct the notion that continuous development in this sector automatically equates to economic growth. Thorough analysis of Philippine economic trends and legislations - especially those in relation to infrastructural programs such as the Build Better More initiatives - guide the proponents’ investigation and petition for governments to allocate more focus towards strengthening human capital, agricultural sectors, and our environmental resources. At its core, the paper contextualizes the perceived growth of the Philippines’ infrastructural sector while simultaneously calling for more environmentally sustainable and humane economic policies to be set in place. An aspiring media practitioner, Izzy is a 2nd Year BA Communication student and campus journalist from Holy Angel University. With a great passion for the social and environmental sciences alike, Izzy is a firm and fervent advocate for sustainable economics and humane innovation. She wholeheartedly believes that critical analysis of past and present production, consumption, and utilization trends of environmental and human capital is needed to holistically address novel and long-occurring problems such as poverty, wealth inequalities, and environmental exploitation. As such, she is a steadfast advocate for empowering the role of the Filipino masses and marginalized communities in democratic and development-focused contexts. Determination and faithful service emboldens her pursuit for a future that champions true humane sustainability in all aspects. |
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S Darshan | The Awakening of Common Consciousness: AGI and the Transition to a Resource-Based Economy | |||
I am a full-time volunteer at Tarumitra for the last 6 years and my name is Darshan. Specialised in conducting environmental impact assessments of institutions, industries, offices and infrastructure development projects. I am mostly interested in waste management in relation to human habits and government policies. Nowadays I am involved in inculcating ecological intelligence among youth so they can make informed choices of habit change for climate change and plastic culture. Being an environmentalist I have designed a few activities and programs to equip students with the environmental policies of our government and the impacts of plastic on various beings including humans. |
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Kirsten Dwayne A. Dizon | The Manifestation of Greed in Consumer Electronics: A Filipino Big Historian's Analysis of Resource Scarcity | |||
Dwayne, a driven and inquisitive individual, stands out among his peers as a 2nd year BS Computer Science student from Holy Angel University. His remarkable leadership skills earned him a position within the League of Outstanding Programmers (LOOP) – a prestigious organization for computer science students within the campus. However, it is his unwavering curiosity, tenacity, and ambition that truly distinguishes him. Constantly seeking knowledge and personal growth, Dwayne embraces habits such as reading, journaling, and maintaining a regular workout routine. Beyond his passion for technology, Dwayne also finds inspiration in various art forms, recognizing their ability to serve as medium for creative expression. This innate curiosity not only propels his academic pursuits but also led him to explore the intriguing field of Big History, where he learns to unravel the intricately woven tapestry of history within the fabric of the universe. |
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Todd Duncan | Fundamental Physics and Big History: Exploring Perspectives on Ultimate Reality | |||
Todd Duncan combines a research background in physics & astronomy with experience teaching science concepts to a wide range of audiences. His education includes a Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the University of Chicago and Physics degrees from the University of Illinois and Cambridge University. His core interest is understanding the fundamental nature of reality as best he can, while helping others discover their own ways to explore deep questions. He teaches at Pacific University in Oregon. |
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Fritzgerald Gonzales | The Manifestation of Greed in Consumer Electronics: A Filipino Big Historian's Analysis of Resource Scarcity | |||
Fritz is an upcoming 2nd year Computer Science student at Holy Angel University. He is currently a part of the School of Computing's student council serving as councilor for public relations. When in doubt, he rides his bike to ease his body and mind. |
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Ursula Goodenough | : The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Emerged and Evolved | |||
Harvard Ph.D. in Biology, 1969, Professor of Biology at Washington University until retirement in 2017. Lab research in molecular and cell biology; teaching in cell biology and evolution. Author of The Sacred Depths of Nature, 1998 and 2023. Five children, nine grandchildren. |
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Rob Grace | Human Rights: A Big History Perspective | |||
Rob Grace is a researcher focused on the politics, practice, and history of humanitarianism and human rights. He has led or contributed to research projects at the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies at Brown University, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Center for Civilians in Conflict, U.S. Institute of Peace, and Lincoln Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on the politics of international law and international humanitarian response at Brown University, Brandeis University, and the University of San Diego. He holds a PhD in political science from Brown University. |
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Sergey Grinchenko | Big History in the Digital Perspective | |||
Sergey is the Chief Researcher at the Institute of Informatics Problems, Federal Research Centre "Informatics and Control" of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. He is also the Vice President of the Biocosmological Association and full member of the International Informatization Academy. Areas of scientific interests include search engine optimization theory, cybernetic biology, cybernetic sociotechnology, cybernetic physics, theoretical informatics. |
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Anton Grinin | Viruses and Evolution | |||
Anton Grinin is a research fellow at Moscow State University and National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. With a Ph.D. in biology, his academic interests include bioethics, evolutionary and future studies, the history and philosophy of technology, and globalization. He specializes in the technological revolution unfolding in the 21st century, especially in cybernetics. These events will result in the profound transformation of the economy and society, posing ethic-legal and other risks. Anton also investigates correlations between the Cybernetic Revolution, Kondratieff waves, and issues of global ageing. The author more than fifty publications in Russian and English, including two monographs, he has won the Gold Kondratieff Young Scholars Medal and the Alexander Belyaev Literature Award. |
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Leonid Grinin | Megaevolution: Its Main and Transitional Phases, Chemical Evolution in Big History | |||
Leonid E. Grinin is Director of Uchitel Publishing, Volgograd, Russia. Beginning as a teacher in rural schools, he founded his publishing firm to develop educational materials in the 1980s. He then completed a Ph.D. at Moscow State University and expanded Uchitel to serve a global market in Russian and English. A sociologist, philosopher of history, and economist, his work focuses on identifying regularities of macroevolution. Among his thirty monographs are From Confucius to Comte: The Formation of the Theory, Methodology and Philosophy of History (2012, in Russian); Macrohistory and Globalization (2012); and The Big History of the Universe’s Development: Cosmic Evolution (2013, in Russian). Leonid co-authored Great Divergence and Great Convergence: A Global Perspective (2015) and co-edits the international journals, Social Evolution and History and Journal of Globalization Studies. A founding member and Deputy Director of the Eurasian Center for Megahistory & System Forecasting, access to his portal, Social Studies. |
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Lorenzo Miguel N. Guarin | Reflections on Colonization and Globalization as Neutralizing Factors of Filipino Culture | |||
The centuries of colonization in the Philippines have resulted to different cultures being incorporated into the Filipinos' own culture. With that, the paper aims to explore different experiences and observations as reflections of the changes in the Filipino culture with colonization and globalization as neutralizing factors; as well as discovering its implications on the future, the world, and Big History. JM is a 2nd Year BS Civil Engineering student from Holy Angel University, and an advocate of cultural history. A member of various school organizations, JM takes pride in his personality as a jack of all trades. Multifaceted in his studies, he enjoys casual writing and reading as his hobbies, and has a penchant for academic research. His foray into the fields of biomedicine, humanities, and renewable energy gives him a wide array of information and knowledge to utilize in further studies. At heart, JM is a person with insatiable curiosity; one who does not back down from the unknown. Lorenzo is a 2nd Year BS Hospitality Management student from Holy Angel University. He majors in Culinary Arts and Kitchen Operations, pursuing his passion for cooking, food preparation as well as customer service. Lorenzo is a curious person by nature with interests in reading psychology and philosophy, writing poetry, and dancing. Rooted in his fascination for new knowledge, skills, and experiences, he took interest in the culinary world as a way to learn and experiment with flavors to create beautiful dishes. Similarly, he saw Big History as a way to expand his capabilities in understanding the little details, their connections, and how they complete the big picture. |
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Lowell Gustafson | Emergent Complexity: A Rationale for the University | |||
Lowell Gustafson is Professor of Political Science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania (USA). His course on ‘Our Social Nature’ uses a Big History approach, and he has also taught it at the Graterford maximum security prison near Villanova. His research has included how science explains the origin and development of polity and how emergent complexity provides anintellectual rationale for universities. He has served as secretary, vice-president, and president of the International Big History Association (IBHA), and as editor of Origins: The Bulletin of the IBHA, and the Journal of Big History. |
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Tony Harper | The Interaction Between Complexity And Entropy Over Human History As Exemplified By Changes In Urbanization | |||
Antony Harper, a researcher in the general area of applied mathematics to human his-torical processes, also understood as quantitative history and more appropriately, using Peter Turchin's term, as cliodynamics. He is currently associated with both New Trier College and Benedictine University. His primary research interests are modelling the pattern of urbanization over recorded history, i.e., from approximately 3000 BCE to the present. More currently these interests include understanding the consequences of this urbanization pattern, applying the model of punctuated equilibrium, originally propounded by Eldridge and Gould, to the pattern of urbanization, understanding why complex systems in general should exhibit the PE pattern of growth, and within the constraints of punctuated equilibrium beginning to understand the context and mechanisms that bring about punctuated change, i.e., quite frankly, understanding what causes historic tipping points. |
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John Hasse | The Nexus of Storytelling and Collective Learning: A symbiotic spark for human emergence | |||
John Hasse, Ph.D. AICP is a professor of geography and Director of the Geospatial Research Lab in the Department of Geography, Planning & Sustainability at Rowan University where he teaches various courses in geography, GIS and planning. Hasse's research interest focuses on land use geography and the interface of land use, environmental planning and spatial analysis. Hasse has taught courses in geography, planning and GIS where he integrates the big picture perspectives of geography and Big History with the applied tools of planning for designing a more resilient future land system. Professor Hasse integrates these same interests in his research where he has been conducting an on-going multi-decade analysis of urbanization and open space loss in New Jersey and studies the environmental impacts of future development buildout. Hasse has established the NJ MAP project, an award-winning online interactive atlas of New Jersey's environmental data. For the past decade Hasse has been teaching a course that tells the story of planet earth that integrates the time dimensions of Big History with the spatial dimensions of geography. Central to this work is the perspective of humans as the storytelling species. |
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Nick Hoggard | Chaos Theory and Complexity Thresholds in Evolution - from the Big Bang to the Technological Singularity | |||
This is an information-centred theory of evolution that unites biological, cultural and technological evolution. The thresholds are shown to be: 1) Big Bang, 2) Life, 3) Multicellular Life, 4) Behavioural Flexibility, 5) Tool Use, 6) Tool-making, 7) Using Tools to Make Tools, 8) Composite Tools, 9) New Inventions, 10) New Livelihoods, 11) Writing, 12) Printing, 13) Computing. Nick was awarded a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1980, and has mostly worked as a software developer, as well doing some research in the use of artificial intelligence in industrial control systems. |
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Kenji Ichikawa | Layered Structure of Little Big History ― Case Study of Enoshima, Japan | |||
Kenji Ichikawa市川賢司 is a teacher at Aletheia Shonan High School in Chigasaki, Kanagawa, Japan. He teaches world history and began the first high-school Big History class in Japan in 2016. In 2019, he gave a report about his teaching of Big History and the liberal arts at the first international Big History symposium held in Japan, at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo. In 2022, he presented titled “A Little Big History of Silicon” at the first global big history webinar in Japan. He may be contacted at fumimaya001@gmail.com. |
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Andrey V. Korotayev | Patterns of complexity growth in the Big History. A preliminary quantitative analysis | |||
Andrey V. Korotayev is Head, Laboratory for Monitoring Destabilization Risks, National Research University Higher School of Economics, and Professor, Faculty for Global Processes, Moscow State University, Russia. Beginning as an historian of Arabia, he made focused studies, such as seen in ‘Two Social Ecological Crises and Genesis of Tribal Organization in the Yemeni North-East’ (1996). Andrey researches topics in quantitative cross-cultural anthropology and seeks to understand biological and social macroevolution, as in ‘A Compact Macromodel of World System Evolution’ (2005) and ‘Mathematical Modeling of Biological and Social Phases of Big History’ (2014). He is a founding member of the Eurasian Center for Megahistory & System Forecasting and founder of Evolution, an almanac dedicated to the study of Universal Evolution, and thus is closely linked with Big History. Most recently, he has produced, with David LePoire, a collective monograph, The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures: A Big History Perspective (2020). He serves as a board member of the International Big History Association. |
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Alexis Lau | Science, Environment and Society – STEAM Education and Big History in Hong Kong | |||
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Gustavo Lau | Some Applications of a Big History Concept | |||
Gustavo Lau was born in Lima, Peru in 1964 and immigrated to Caracas, Venezuela in 1976. Since 1994 he has worked in finance in London, UK where he is currently a principal of Episteme Capital. He holds a PhD in Computer Science (2019) from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain, an M.S. degree in Computer Science (1988) and two B.S. in Mathematics (1988) and Computer Science (1986) from the Simón Bolívar University, Venezuela. In his spare time, Mr Lau is a Mathematics Masterclasses lecturer for the Royal Institution of Great Britain and a Guest Professor at Simón Bolívar University, Venezuela. In January 2022 he founded the Big History Club of Simón Bolívar University. Since then he has been teaching informally the Big History course of the OER Project in that club. |
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David LePoire | Complexity and Entropy in Cosmic Development including the Cosmic Web and Initial Conditions | |||
David LePoire researches, develops and applies science principles in environmental issues, Big History evolutionary trends, and particle scattering. He has a BS in physics from CalTech, a Ph.D. in computer science from DePaul University, and over thirty years experience at the Argonne National Laboratory in the development of scientific analyses, software, training, and modelling. His research includes Big History synergistic trends among energy, environment, organization, and information. |
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Paul Narguizian | Big History: Integrating Complexity in Biology Education | |||
Paul Narguizian is Professor of Biological Science and Science Education at California State University, Los Angeles. His Big History Science Education research lab develops curricula for non-science and science majors with examples from the Big History and Journey of the Universe projects, popular films, science fiction, the nature and history of science, and data from scientific research. His students explore key research questions such as: What are the major milestones in biological discovery that expand our knowledge of life? What role should the grand narrative of the formation of the universe play in biology education? How can museum objects and natural history collections help us better understand Big History? Paul presented on the future of biology education at the 2019 IBHA symposium in Milan and published ‘Considering Grand Challenges in Undergraduate General Biology Education in the Journal of Big History (2020). |
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Bernardo Nery | The question of property and trade: cognition, behavior and human evolution | |||
Bernardo Nery holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in the Comparative History graduate program at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he is working on his thesis "A Study on the Origin of Social Hierarchies: A Cognitive Comparative History Perspective." His research interests include comparative history, cognitive history, social hierarchies, and economic history. |
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Nick Nielsen | Big History for ETI: Recognizing Parochial and Non-Parochial Forms of Complexity | |||
J.N. ‘Nick’ Nielsen is an independent scholar from Oregon who studies emergent complexity, especially as it relates to civilization and its future in the context of big history. He has spoken about the future of civilization at several conferences (100YSS, Icarus Interstellar, SSoCIA), including the 2014 IBHA conference in San Rafael, the July 2019 IBHA symposium in Milan (where he spoke on ‘Peer Complexity during the Stelliferous Era ’), and the 2020 webinar, Being A Good Ancestor (speaking on ‘Scientific Approaches to Civilization’). |
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Rachel Oser | Science, Environment and Society – STEAM Education and Big History in Hong Kong | |||
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Alexander Panov | Big History in the Galaxy: about risks of contacts with alien civilizations | |||
Alexander D. Panov graduated from Moscow State University, Department of Physics. At present, he is a leading researcher at the Moscow State University Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics (MSU SINP), and is doctor of sciences (Physics and Mathematics). His major works are devoted to nuclear physics, surface physics, quantum theory of measurement, cosmic rays physics, and problems of universal evolution / Big History. He is the author of about 200 articles in the Russian and international academic press, as well as the author of the monograph Universal Evolution and Problems of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). |
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Beatriz Pimentel | Chimpanzee behaviour and Clausewitzian war: differences and similarities in the realms of politics and conflict | |||
Beatriz Pimentel holds a Bachelor's degree in Defense and Strategic International Management from UFRJ. Currently, she is conducting research on the relationship between war and human evolution. Her research interests encompass the fields of defense, international relations, and evolutionary anthropology, where she explores their intersections and implications. |
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Godwin C. Pring | Finite Resources, Infinite Greed: Deconstructing the Infrastructural Progress in the Philippines | |||
Godwin, currently a 2nd-year BS Accountancy student at Holy Angel University, wholeheartedly believes in the transformative power of deconstruction as a force for the construction of valuable change. As a writer for the university's official student publication, he confronts the status quo by unyieldingly voicing and writing honest criticisms of problematic policies and structures that afflict his community. Even more in today's world, plagued by the depletion of natural resources and the relentless assault on indigenous institutions due to rapid modernization and urbanization, Godwin believes in the idea of championing the necessity of critical analysis. For by shedding light on the flaws in state policies and projects, he believes that we can forge a sustainable future that answers the call of the times. His unwavering conviction drives him to enlighten others and work towards a better world for current and future generations. |
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Ekaterina Sashienko | Evolutionary prospects for the development of AI | |||
PhD, lecturer at the State University «Dubna», Russia. |
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Stephen Satkiewicz | Social Complexity and War from a Big History Perspective | |||
Independent scholar whose comprehensive research areas included are civilizational analysis, social complexity, Big history, historical sociology, military history, war studies, international relations, geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. |
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John Matthew C. Sausora | Reflections on Colonization and Globalization as Neutralizing Factors of Filipino Culture | |||
JM is a 2nd Year BS Civil Engineering student from Holy Angel University, and an advocate of cultural history. A member of various school organizations, JM takes pride in his personality as a jack of all trades. Multifaceted in his studies, he enjoys casual writing and reading as his hobbies, and has a penchant for academic research. His foray into the fields of biomedicine, humanities, and renewable energy gives him a wide array of information and knowledge to utilize in further studies. At heart, JM is a person with insatiable curiosity; one who does not back down from the unknown. |
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Juan Gabriel C. Simbulan | Finite Resources, Infinite Greed: Deconstructing the Infrastructural Progress in the Philippines | |||
Yuan, a 2nd-year BA Communication student at Holy Angel University, is a committed purveyor of truth as he sets out his advocacy as a student journalist constantly seeking for accountability in this society filled with inequality. Growing up as an outspoken child, Yuan found power through voicing out as a consistent student journalist since elementary. Furthermore, as he opened his eyes to the cruel truths of the society that he personally faced, saw, and observed from those around him, it sparked a fighting spirit to always become a device to amplify the voices of the masses. As a critic of those in power, he outwardly condemns policies being made that are only good for those who have power. Moreover, he believes that policies should be made for the masses, those who are flightless and marginalized. This is his constant advocacy of fighting for the people and his community and speaking out about injustices even with a shaky voice. |
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Walter Silva | The Evolutionary Roots of Warfare and Its Ecological Conditions | |||
Walter Silva holds a Ph.D. in Ethics and Political Philosophy from PUCRS, where he was awarded a fellowship to conduct research at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Currently, he is an Associate Professor and Vice-Head of the Philosophy Department at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ). Silva's research interests span a wide range of topics including Ethics, Political Philosophy, Evolutionary Theory, morality and politics, Philosophy of Biology, democracy, political liberalism, individualism, theories of justice, and freedom of speech./p |
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Ken Solis | Cosmic Evolution – A Critical Appraisal of Energy Rate Density | |||
Ken Solis is a retired internist and ER physician with a master’s degree in bioethics. His long trips to and from work over the years also gave him many hours to listen to lectures on other fields in the sciences, philosophy, and history. By coincidence, he was teaching “A Brief History of the Universe” to adults before he encountered David Christian’s big bistory lectures for “The Great Courses.” His special interest in big history is what thermodynamics, information theory, and complexity science might reveal about how systems have, depending on the circumstance, progressed, regressed, and diversified over time. He has also applied these disciplines to the formulation of an information-centric ethical theory that was published in JBH. |
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Fred Spier | How did humanity get itself into its current ecological predicament? | |||
In my presentation, the major results will be summarized of pursuing this fundamental issue for more than forty years. As part of that, important themes will be presented that are discussed in my recent book How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers (2022, CRC Press), in which I seek to address that general issue in novel ways. Fred Spier is senior lecturer in big history emeritus at the University of Amsterdam, NL. He holds a M.Sc. in chemistry (with distinction) as well as a M.A. and Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and social history (both cum laude, the highest distinction in the Netherlands). He has taught and researched big history for almost thirty years, while lecturing about it around the world. He authored the highly-acclaimed books Religious Regimes in Peru (1994), for which Spier was awarded a Praemium Erasmianum Study Prize 1993; The Structure of Big History: From the Big Bang until Today (1996); Big History and the Future of Humanity (2010, 2015); and How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers (2022). Between 2011 and 2014, Spier was the IBHA’s founding vice president (and its president de facto), and between 2014 and 2016 its second president. More info on: www.fredspier.com |
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Spencer Striker | Empires & Interconnections for iPad | Challenging Students with Wicked Problems in History | |||
: Spencer Striker, PhD is Associate Professor of Digital Media Design at Northwestern University in Qatar. Striker’s digital work centers on interaction design, mobile media, digital media and learning, video games, and entrepreneurship. He is the creator of History Adventures: World of Characters—a fully interactive digital learning series that presents a fresh approach to history education, combining mobile entertainment technology with the power of narrative design. He is also the creator of Global Pandemics, a cross-platform digital learning series designed to enhance student understanding of the role of pandemics in world history. Striker's body of work includes over 15 years of award-winning digital media design that includes apps, games, motion comics, VR, podcasts, and original web series; working at the intersection of industry and academia. Striker’s awards include an Anthem Awards Silver Medal; 2 Horizon Interactive Gold Awards; 2 nominations for Best Educational App at the Reimagine Education Awards and Winner of Best EdTech Innovation in the Middle East; and 4 Webby Awards. His projects have received competitive funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Northwestern’s Innovation & New Ventures Office; the HBKU Innovation Center; the Oxford Research Institute; and the Qatar National Research Fund. In addition to his academic experience, Striker has been active in the digital media industry, having served as founding creative director of the Silicon Valley learning games startup, Galxyz, Inc, (which raised $4m in funding from Relay Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective). |
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Amber Stuver | Probing to the Depths of the Universe with Gravitational Waves | |||
Dr. Stuver specializes in computational aspects of gravitational-wave searches, with experience in data analysis design, gravitational wave simulation, and detector characterization investigations to minimize the impact of noise in the search for astrophysical signals with LIGO. She is also a fluent science communicator, having given tours to thousands of visitors to the LIGO Livingston Observatory, speaking at many local venues, and writing content for outlets like TED-Ed. |
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Jenna Thompson | Enlarging Our Map of Reality: Exploring the Threshold Between Thoughts and Words | |||
Nobuo Tsujimura | The “Big Twist”: For making big history multicultural and multinatural | |||
Nobuo Tsujimura is a big historian living in Tokyo and has played a role of a hub to activate big history home and abroad as president of the Asian Big History Association; board members of the International Big History Association in the US and the Institute for Global and Cosmic Peace in Yokohama; and adviser for the Oberlin Big History Movement based in J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo. In 2019, he co-organized the first international big history symposium in Japan with Professor Hirofumi Katayama at Oberlin, where he is currently teaching three big history courses as adjunct lecturer. He may be contacted at palettehole@gmail.com. |
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Daniel Vainfas | Chimpanzee behaviour and Clausewitzian war; Class, Commerce and Climate; | |||
Beatriz Pimentel (beatriz00pimentel@gmail.com) Daniel Vainfas (danielvainfas@gmail.com) This communication explores the connections between chimpanzee intragroup social behaviour, intergroup aggression, and the classic approach to war theory developed by Clausewitz. Drawing on research from primatology, anthropology, and military studies, we argue that chimpanzee social behaviour, as well as their antisocial attitudes towards out-group primates, provide valuable insights into this 19th century approach to war. As chimpanzees live in complex societies with hierarchies, alliances, and coalitions, they offer an interesting framework to explore the implications of politics and conflict and can help inform our understanding of war and military strategy. We draw on the work of Clausewitz to explore the similarities and differences between chimpanzee behaviour and the classic approach to war theory. Specifically, we focus on the role of politics and aggression in determining the outcomes of conflicts from both in-group and out-group perspectives. Class, Commerce and Climate: an investigation on a set of circumstances for the rise of capitalism in 15th century England Daniel Vainfas holds a Doctorate in Economics from the PPGE-UFRJ, with a thesis focused on the intersection between economics and long-term phenomena, with a particular emphasis on the impact of climate change on the transition from feudalism to capitalism. He also earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics and a Master's degree in International Political Economy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. |
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Rhod Railey T. De Vera | The Manifestation of Greed in Consumer Electronics: A Filipino Big Historian's Analysis of Resource Scarcity | |||
Rai is a 1st year BS Computer Science student from Holy Angel University. He is currently a scholar of the SM Foundation. Rai is also a member of the University Student Council and is under the Research and Development Special Committee. He is also an advocate for student empowerment. |
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Tyler Volk | Combination and complexity | |||
At the scale of 4 billion years, the scale of life on Earth, Tyler Volk, Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies, New York University, looks for new models and draws links across various disciplines. Author of Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be (2017) and Metapatterns: Across, Space, Time, and Mind (1995), here Volk, a self-described “patternologist,” compares his tripartite system of dynamic realms with the working conceptual structures currently deployed in the field of big history. |
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Marc Widdowson | The last stop on the cosmic journey: an estimated time of arrival | |||
Independent researcher, primarily in government and defence, providing applied history insights in such areas as multinational coalitions, social mood and instability, financial networks, and effects of technology on society. |
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Aidan Wong | Science, Environment and Society – STEAM Education and Big History in Hong Kong | |||
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