Trying out a new creation myth

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, origins

Dr. David Christian is among a handful of people that founded, and promote, the concept of Big History. Of course, the biggest history available is that of the whole Universe, which has been presented at various angles by none other than Prof. Stephen Hawking via the books A Brief History of Time (1988), The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), The Grand Design (2010, with Leonard Mlodinow), and Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018, Posthumous). A pretty hard act to follow!

In his book Origin Story, a Big History of Everything, Dr. Christian proposes to replace Genesis and other creation stories with a simplified but comprehensive account of scientific knowledge regarding the Universe, the Earth, and us.

I like his approach. He identifies 8 milestones that he calls Thresholds. One could say they represent successive crystallizations of the flow of energy. One author (I no longer recall who) wrote of "hangups" in the otherwise steady flow of energy from the extreme contrast represented by the Big Bang, to the eventual heat death of the Universe as it reaches maximum possible entropy. For example, stars "hang up" energy by forging hydrogen into helium at a measured rate; also, gravity causes galaxies, galaxy clusters, and superclusters to form and retain their integrity for billions of years, rather than everything falling straight back together. The simplest hangup is the minuscule torque found in a hypothetical universe of just two particles, being attracted by gravity. If either particle has even a trace of sideways momentum, not directly on the line between them, they will miss one another at closest approach, and some sort of orbit will be achieved instead. If they bear an electric charge, they will emit photons as they are accelerated, so that over time, the orbit will shrink until they collide. But the process will take eons longer than if they were to fall directly into one another.

A little under half the book is taken up with the story of the Universe from the Big Bang, and the energy threshold of the Big Bang itself, followed by those represented by the formation of stars, galaxies, molecules, and life, leading up to Threshold 6, Humans. Somehow, the capture of electrons by nucleons to form atoms, which I would think of as a significant threshold, and certainly had a great effect on energy flow in the Universe, is glossed over. Naturally, this would come before molecules. In faithfulness, I must note that the writing in this portion is less than compelling. I went to YouTube to watch some of Dr. Christian's lectures and a TED talk. He is an excellent speaker. It just doesn't show in this portion of the book; there is a lack of passion.

He hits his stride once he begins to discuss agrarian civilizations, which we tend to call just Civilization, as if there were no other. The transition from foraging to farming, which took place over several thousand years, erupting in various places, is quite a crystallization of the human species, from a more fluid state to the settledness of farms and cities. The clear passion shown by the author in this and later portions make for much more agreeable reading. The slog through the earlier portions mostly explains why it took me so long to read this book.

I would call Origin Story a useful first step to making Big History accessible to the bulk of us. There is a long way to go.