Three Cheers for Big History, David Christian, and Bill Gates

Nerd fest. Love it.

The NYT published its education issue of the Magazine that included an article entitled “So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a History Class . . .” written by Andrew Ross Sorkin about Bill Gates and his promotion of “Big History”. The article details the Big History project that grew from the inquisitive mind of David Christian, an academic who started his teaching career as a Russian history specialist in Australia. Christian decided to widen the scope of history, and he developed a course that runs from the Big Bang to the present (and that even peers over the edge into the future). Bill Gates, like me, came across the Teaching Company course and really liked it. (Bill watched on his treadmill. I listened in my car.) Gates was taken with the concept and now actively promotes it. It’s heartening (in a small, silly sort of way) that the world’s richest nerd shares my enthusiasm. 

The article describes the genesis of the project, beginning with David Christian’s personal history, his initial course development, his “discovery” by the Teaching Company, and their release of the course in 2008. Gates (a fellow Teaching Company aficionado) not only became enthusiastic about the course, but he put his money where his mouth (and brain) is and began to promote it through his Foundation. Now the course is taught in more and more schools. 

Some of the article includes comments from those who carp about Gates and his involvement in education. Such comments are petty. He puts ideas to the test and backs up his enthusiasm with money, testing, and refinement. Business leaders who promote educational reform (even real change) aren’t going to lead us to the educational mountaintop, but they can help. Gates seems exemplary in this regard. At least he’s not out trying to buy elections for right-wing causes. Besides, he’s a rather likeable nerd, and he channels his nerdiness to good use. I’ll never share his income bracket, but I do share his enthusiasm for this and other topics. (He posts lists of books that he’s read that’s a treasure of serious, non-fiction reading.)

The other gripe in the article came from Stanford history professor Sam Wineburg, who complained that the course left out too much history (of the archives and texts variety) to focus on natural science. This misses the point of the course, which is—contrary to the organization of colleges and universities—truly multi-disciplinary. This should not be a turf war. We can view history through a telescope looking back into vast areas of time, space, or topic, or we can view it through a microscope, focusing on moment-to-moment events documented by texts in archives. Each has its place and irreplaceable value. No single perspective, large or small, distant or recent, can supplant all of the others. 

The best aspect of this article, however, is that it gives us pause to think about history and to asses its nature and value. What is history? History is the master discipline, the source of knowledge. Every thing has a history: the universe, you and me, civilizations, disciplines (math, science, literature, etc.). Every thing changes over time (although sometimes too slowly for us to appreciate). All knowledge is from the past. This idea isn’t my creation, but a gift that I received from John Lukacs. Lukacs calls on C.S. Lewis to help explicate the insight: 

The past in our minds is memory. Human beings cannot create, or even imagine, anything that is entirely new. (The Greek work for "truth, aletheia, also means "not forgetting")"There is not a vestige of real creativity de novo in us," C.S. Lewis once wrote. No one can even imagine an entirely new color; or an entirely new animal; or even a third sex. At best (or worst) one can imagine a new combination of already existing—that is, known to us—colors, or monsters, or sexes.

Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 52.

Lukacs goes on: 

In sum, the history of anything amounts to that thing itself. History is not a social science but an unavoidable form of thought. That "we live forward but we can only think backward" is true not only of the present (which is always a fleeting illusion) but of our entire view of the future: for even when we think of the future we do this by remembering. But history cannot tell us anything about the future with certainly. Intelligent research, together with a stab of psychological understanding, may enable us to reconstruct something from the past; still, it cannot help us predict the future. There are many reasons for this unpredictability (for believing Christians let me say that Providence is one); but another (God-ordained) element is that no two human beings have ever been the same. History is real; but it cannot be made to "work", because of its unpredictability. 

Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 53-54

Strictly speaking, I would define history as the study of the recorded past (again following Lukacs). That has meant mostly documents, but it now includes a variety of other media as well. For more remote times, we get glimpses of life from the world of signs, symbols, and non-perishable tools. But in a larger sense, the “Big History” sense, we can understand history as the story of change. Thus, we move beyond (but do not discard) the story of politics, war, individuals (biography), social relations, or economics, among the more traditional subjects of history. We now encompass the natural world as well. The cutting edge of physics investigates the changing universe, while biology was revolutionized by its incorporation of history, which we label “evolution”. This appreciation of change is relatively new to the Western mind. It has a genesis going back to Heraclitus, but ideas about static Being and an unchanging God dominated for the greater part of Western history. With the likes of Hegel, Whitehead, and Eastern thinking (Daoist and Buddhist), we now enjoy a conceptual orientation that better appreciates the fundamental perspective of change and process. 

The other point to consider about the value of the Big History project comes from its value for bridging the two cultures. Since everything has a history, including every body of knowledge (as a field of study and in the “real world”), each subject can be taught through its history. I first received this idea from the late Neil Postman. (Sorry, I don’t have my library here to provide you the title in which he makes this point.) But as usual, John Lukacs has a pertinent quote, and from none other than the greatest American philosopher, William James: 

William James wrote: "You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught by reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to whom these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature means grammar, art a catalog, history as list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures" 

At the End of an Age, 53, quoting James, Memories and Studies (1911), 312-313.

So I say “three cheers!” for Bill Gates, David Christian, and Big History.

And Now, for the Rest of the Story . . . A Review of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The late radio newscaster and commentator, Paul Harvey, did a bit for while called “The Rest of Story”.  He’d would start of a tale of adversity, come to an opportune moment, and break for a commercial pitch (usually, a cleaner called Bon Ami--emphasis on the first syllable). He’d then return with an announcement (and a voice he could have trademarked), “And now, for the rest of the story!”, wherein he reveals the protagonist’s triumph over the adversity earlier described. Malcolm Gladwell has done something similar in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success. However, unlike Harvey’s tales, it isn’t simply a matter of the hero’s pluck and perseverance, but also of plain ol’ good luck. 

Not that Gladwell diminishes the value of hard work; indeed, it’s the sine quo non of success (see, for example, his discussion of the 10,000-hour rule). Nor does he ignore “talent”, that God-given set of personal characteristics that we receive via our particular gene pool. It’s just that talent along doesn’t tell us much about what distinguishes the pretty good from the exceptional. What distinguishes the exceptional is luck (or in terms from Machiavelli’s melodious Italian, Fortuna). Luck can take the form of extraordinary early access to computers (Bill Gates & Bill Joy); year of birth (highly successful Jewish lawyers in NYC in the 1970s and 1980s), or the color (or even tone) of your skin. This outlook is the anti-Bush, anti-Romney tale. For instance, Jeb Bush speaks of how he overcame obstacles to achieve business success, while Romney touts himself (or did, who cares now?) as a self-made man. Not that either man didn’t work hard, I’m sure that they did, but each received benefits from family and upbringing and wealth that very few Americans could match. They are among the fortunate few, although they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge it (although, except that we may suffer the plague of Jeb, who cares a whit about Mitt Romney anymore?). (Hypothesis: what separates wealthy Dems (e.g., a Ted Kennedy) from Republicans, like a Bush or Romney, is an appreciation of at least ancestors having come up through the ranks and that good fortune has made the difference in their life’s course.) 

Like Gladwell’s other books, he relies on strong academic sources mixed with well-written and structured narratives. Indeed, Gladwell tells one narrative and then alters it with a “and now for the rest of the story” addendum. This way of approaching this topic makes for fun and compelling reading. Gladwell relates how rice paddy agriculture and the Chinese language for numbers can help account for extraordinary mathematical success by students from these Asian cultures and how culture brought from the Scottish highlands by Scotch-Irish settlors in the U.S. South can account for greater violence there, and so on. 

One thing I took away especially is the importance of school: of teachers and resources. Indeed, the whole book screams at us to provide opportunities for persons to realize their potentials in whatever their fields of endeavor or interest. Something as arbitrary as birthdays greatly influence ultimate success in many athletic fields simply because, when size provides an advantage, the older kids enjoy an edge that gets translated into more opportunities for play, which translates into more hours of practice, and . . . well, you get the picture. Scarily, Gladwell suggests that if Canadians changed their hockey league qualifications from yearly breaks to six-month breaks, they’d double the number of first-rate hockey players that they produce. If we as a society should learn anything from this, it’s that opportunity—the ability learn and grow—should serve as one of the highest social values. Sadly, I don’t think that we’re doing this.

A fun and easy read; instructive and ultimately inspiring, I recommend this book. 

Malcolm Gladwell is scheduled to participate in #JLF in 2014.  

David Christian & Really Big History

This is my year (or two, or three) of reading big history. Iam Morris's Why the West Rules--For Now is probably my biggest, widest angle look so far (and I should mention 1493 and The Better Angels of Our Nature as recent additions), but David Christian dwarfs Morris's tour, which runs from the beginning of humankind to our possible futures. In this TED talk, Christian begins at the Big Bang! Now that's big history! And quite a fascinating tour it is: from the first nanosecond of creation to the present is a story of increasing complexity and "Goldilocks" (just right) circumstances that bring us to our present. Just right--and quite fragile. Anyway, the tour is fascinating. He and some of his colleagues have put together "The Big History Project" at this webpage for use as a high school curriculum. What a great idea and organizing theme to look at our past through both the physical and social sciences, and a great way to learn and teach complexity. Consider the desirability of learning history through this kind of lens, and not as just "one damn thing after another", as it is too often taught. No one remembers disjointed events well, but add a story (narrative) and they'll remember; make it a detective story (as history really is), and you've got them hooked.

P.S. How wonderfully nerdy is this? After initially posting, I found a short talk by Bill Gates on the Big History Project website home page. The ultimate nerd endorsement!

Bill Gates vs. Matt Ridley

This is an interesting "debate" between Bill Gates of the Gates Foundation (and if you're from another planet, Microsoft) and Matt Ridley, the Rational Optimist, of whom I've posted before. The debate is a well-argued one, with each participant respecting the virtues of the other. Gates, like me, admires Ridley's work on history and his guiding metaphor of exchange--exchange of stuff and ideas--as a prime mover in human improvement. I agree with Gates, however, that Ridley sometimes seems to take an Alfred E. Newman (my choice, not Gates's) attitude ("What? Me worry?"). Gates rates risks with available knowledge, understanding that innovation could change the scene, but we can't count on it. I agree. In all, this is an intelligent exchange between two very capable and, I might add, well-mannered gentlemen.