David Christian > Quotes

“Knowledge is like a sphere; the greater its volume, the larger its contact with the unknown.”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“As an anonymous wit is supposed to have put it: "Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas which, given enough time, changes into people.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History

“For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors, generals, admirals, police chiefs, judges, lawyers, and jailers, along with dungeons, jails, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. Under the tutelage of the state, human beings learned for the first time how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow. In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“Like human lovers, electrons are unpredictable, fickle, and always open to better offers.”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“All knowledge systems, from modern science to those embedded in the most ancient of creation myths, can be thought of as maps of reality. They are never just true or false. Perfect descriptions of reality are unattainable, unnecessary, and too costly for learning organisms, including humans.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“Like the origin stories of Confucianism or early Buddhism, the modern story is about a universe that just is. Any sense of meaning comes not from the universe, but from us humans. “What’s the meaning of the universe?” asked Joseph Campbell, a scholar of myth and religion. “What’s the meaning of a flea? It’s just there, that’s it, and your own meaning is that you’re there.”3”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“So, as networks expand in size, their potential intellectual synergy increases much faster: “larger and denser populations equal faster technological advance.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“As A. J. McMichael writes: “Each species is an experiment of Nature. Only one such experiment, Homo sapiens, has evolved in a way that has enabled its biological adaptation to be complemented by a capacity for cumulative cultural adaptation. This unprecedented combination of the usual biologically-based drive for short-term gain (food, territory and sexual consummation) with an intellectual capacity to satisfy that drive via increasingly complex cultural practices is what distinguishes the human ‘experiment.’”6”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“Nasadiya Sukta (10.129):

There was neither non-existence nor existence then; Neither the realm of space, nor the sky which is beyond; What stirred? Where? In whose protection?

There was neither death nor immortality then; No distinguishing sign of night nor of day; That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse; Other than that there was nothing beyond.

Darkness there was at first, by darkness hidden; Without distinctive marks, this all was water; That which, becoming, by the void was covered; That One by force of heat came into being;

Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? Gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whether God's will created it, or whether He was mute; Perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not; Only He who is its overseer in highest heaven knows,

Only He knows, or perhaps He does not know.—”
― David Christian

“About 250 million years ago, most of the continental plates were joined into a supercontinent, which Wegener had christened “Pangaea.” It was surrounded by a single, large sea, known as Panthalassa.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“As Seth Lloyd puts it: “To do anything requires energy. To specify what is done requires information.”3”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“The Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.… It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.… Yet the GNP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or… the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.… It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“Quantum physics shows that it is in the nature of reality to be unpredictable.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“Human knowledge, by its nature, has limits, so some questions must remain mysteries. Some religions treat such mysteries as secrets that the gods choose to hide from humans; others, such as Buddhism, treat them as ultimate riddles that are not worth pursuing.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“Unlike water, which prefers to lie flat as it accumulates, material wealth in complex societies likes to pile itself up into huge pyramids.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“Population growth accounts for much of the impact as cities have gobbled up farmland and forest land, as roads and highways have paved over more land, and as Third World farmers have cleared forest lands to eke out a living. However, during the late twentieth century it became apparent that rates of population growth were slowing throughout the world as urbanization, increasing education, and improved services simultaneously reduced the pressure to have large families and raised their cost. At present, it seems likely that global populations will level out at 9 to 10 billion toward the end of the twenty-first century.”
― David Christian, This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity

“In the past two hundred years, human numbers grew to over seven billion, and our species began to transform the oceans, the land, and the air. Human-built roads, canals, and railways snaked across the continents, linking thousands of human-built cities with populations in the millions. Vast ships navigated the oceans, and planes ferried goods and people through the air and across the continents. Just a hundred years ago, in glowing filaments and patches, Earth started lighting up at night.”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“That allowed them to model important features of the external world and even to model possible futures. No brainy creature (not even you or I) is in direct contact with its environment. Instead, we all live in a rich virtual reality constructed by our brains. Our brains generate and constantly update maps of the most salient features of our bodies and our surroundings, just as climate scientists model changing environments today.17 Those maps enable us to maintain homeostasis.”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“The modern era is the briefest but most turbulent of the three main eras of human history. Whereas the era of foragers lasted more than 200,000 years and the agrarian era about 10,000 years, the modern era has lasted just 250 years. Yet during this brief era change has been more rapid and more fundamental than ever before; indeed, populations have grown so fast that 20 percent of all humans may have lived during just these two and a half centuries.”
― David Christian, This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity

“Both animal and human slaves could be controlled best if kept economically and psychically dependent on their owners.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“One of the more influential recent estimates by demographer Massimo Livi-Bacci suggests that thirty thousand years ago there were a few hundred thousand humans, but by ten thousand years ago there may have been as many as 6 million. If we assume that approximately 500,000 humans existed thirty thousand years ago, this implies a growth rate between thirty thousand and ten thousand years ago of less than 0.01 percent per annum, which implies that human populations were doubling approximately every eight thousand to nine thousand years. This rate of growth can be compared with an average doubling time of about fourteen hundred years during the agrarian era and eighty-five years during the modern era.”
― David Christian, This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity

“Entropy is the loyal servant of the second law of thermodynamics. So, if we think of entropy as a character in our story, we should imagine it as dissolute, lurking, careless of others’ pain and suffering, not interested in looking you in the eye. Entropy is also very, very dangerous, and in the end it will get us all.”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“Trying to look at the whole of the past is, it seems to me, like using a map of the world. No geographer would try to teach exclusively from street maps. Yet most historians teach about the past of particular nations, or even of agrarian civilizations, without ever asking what the whole of the past looks like.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“the basic rules of serious futurology are (a) look for the large trends and analyze how they work, (b) construct models to suggest how different trends may interact, and (c) be alert for countertrends or other factors that might falsify or cut across the predictions suggested by long trends and simple modeling.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“From the beginning most of history was a story of divergence: humans’ biological and cultural differentiation as they evolved and dispersed across the planet. For the past millennium, history has been dominated by convergent forces, of which globalization is the latest phase. During this era that I call the Great Convergence, human interaction, trade, and intercommunication have increased at a rapid rate.”
― David Christian, The Cambridge World History: Volume 1, Introducing World History, to 10,000 BCE

“As the previous chapter showed, mobile communities of foragers have good reasons to limit population growth. But if they settle down, those limits to population growth can be relaxed. Babies do not need to be carried so much; grain-based diets (particularly if foods are cooked) make it possible to wean children earlier; birth intervals will shorten; and females will reach puberty earlier.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“H. G. Wells wrote a history of humanity as a response to the carnage of World War I. There can be no peace now, we realize, but a common peace in all the world; no prosperity but a general prosperity. But there can be no common peace and prosperity without common historical ideas.… With nothing but narrow, selfish, and conflicting nationalist traditions, races and peoples are bound to drift towards conflict and destruction.2”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“Even in Jericho, the oldest-known farming village, the walls, which were once believed to have been fortifications, are now thought to have been an early form of flood control.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“No scientific theory can claim absolutely certainty.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)

“what we can see may constitute no more than 10 percent, and perhaps as little as 1 percent, of the matter in the universe.”
― David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2)