Big history
LITTLE BIG HISTORY ASSIGNMENT
Assignment summary
Write your own little big history (in Dutch or English):
Select a subject or object that you really like.
Find one connection between your choice and a topic discussed in each class mentioned in the assignment form. Elaborate the three most intriguing connections that you have found between your choice and big history: one connection must come from the history of the non-living world, one from the history of life, and one from human history.
Combine these three elaborations into one single story, discussing the possible links between the three connections that you have found.
Goals of the assignment
The little big history assignment has several goals.
First of all, and most importantly, by linking your subject or object to all of big history, it becomes clear that all its phases can be found in your choice. This enriches your understanding of it, because it is examined from multiple, interdisciplinary, perspectives.
Secondly, the assignment encourages you to come up with new, unusual, ideas. It has long been argued that “all decisive advances in the history of scientific thought can be described in terms of mental cross-fertilization between different disciplines.”1 The discovery of the planets’ movements and the structure of DNA can serve as examples. The astronomer Johannes Keppler allegedly came up with his laws of planetary motion by picturing the Sun, the stars and the dark space in-between them as the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. And Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, reported he first came up with the double helix model of DNA after thinking about reproducing sculptures with the aid of plaster molds.2 Big history provides a platform that enables you to think ‘out of the box’ along similar lines; it enables you to connect things to all different disciplines and allows new ideas to emerge from these links. In other words, the little big history assignment
Assignment summary
Write your own little big history (in Dutch or English):
Select a subject or object that you really like.
Find one connection between your choice and a topic discussed in each class mentioned in the assignment form. Elaborate the three most intriguing connections that you have found between your choice and big history: one connection must come from the history of the non-living world, one from the history of life, and one from human history.
Combine these three elaborations into one single story, discussing the possible links between the three connections that you have found.
Goals of the assignment
The little big history assignment has several goals.
First of all, and most importantly, by linking your subject or object to all of big history, it becomes clear that all its phases can be found in your choice. This enriches your understanding of it, because it is examined from multiple, interdisciplinary, perspectives.
Secondly, the assignment encourages you to come up with new, unusual, ideas. It has long been argued that “all decisive advances in the history of scientific thought can be described in terms of mental cross-fertilization between different disciplines.”1 The discovery of the planets’ movements and the structure of DNA can serve as examples. The astronomer Johannes Keppler allegedly came up with his laws of planetary motion by picturing the Sun, the stars and the dark space in-between them as the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. And Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, reported he first came up with the double helix model of DNA after thinking about reproducing sculptures with the aid of plaster molds.2 Big history provides a platform that enables you to think ‘out of the box’ along similar lines; it enables you to connect things to all different disciplines and allows new ideas to emerge from these links. In other words, the little big history assignment