Book Review: Big History and the Future of Humanity

A book review on Big History and the Future of Humanity The book " Big History and The Future of Humanity " [1] deals with the so-called big history, an approach that places the standard historical analysis in the wider framework of the entire evolution of the universe. It aims at uncovering patterns that could not be appreciated " if one were to examine only smaller portions of our past, " page 30. The amount of knowledge and the diversity of the disciplines necessary to compose the wished-for big history picture (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, history, and many more) impose a multidisciplinary approach. However, the analysis in the book is undertaken by a single author. Evidently, no single author can master the different disciplines at the required level. This makes the book immediately questionable from the viewpoint of a robust big history approach itself. However, this could still be somewhat compensated if the analysis delivered the promised new insights. Let us discuss this. The contrast between the required strongly multidisciplinary approach and its single-author nature makes the book appear rather amateurish at first, but unfortunately the situation is worse. The book contains several serious misconceptions about physical phenomena and their theoretical interpretations. Some of these errors are remarkably naive (for instance, on page 82 the author defines the neutrinos, I quote, " little neutrons, " oblivious of a century of study in fundamental interactions), many are fundamental (for example concerning the radiation era, the role of " empty space " within atoms, and so on). Other mistakes directly affect the pillars at the basis of the author's analysis. The author indeed claims a single principle underlying all evolution in the universe (physical, chemical, biological, cultural, and so on): the growth of complexity determined by energy flow and Goldilocks conditions. Unfortunately, his presentation of the three basic concepts (complexity, energy and Goldilocks conditions), plus a fourth extremely relevant one (entropy) is either incomplete, problematic or incorrect. A most evident case is energy. Let us recall that energy is a concept central to physics since about a couple of centuries. It is defined both conceptually and operationally. Rather unexpectedly-and remarkably-the author writes (Chapter 2) that he could not find a complete and clear definition of energy in any physics book. He proceeds by giving a definition (I quote it: " anything that can change matter ") that is absolutely empty and lumps …