The Tree of Knowledge System: A New Map for Big History

Henriques, Gregg; Michalski, Joseph H.; Quackenbush, Steven W.; Schmidt, W.

doi:10.22339/jbh.v3i4.3410

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 11 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…The origination of "humans" provides a salient example as will be discussed below. The same kind of challenge will be present regarding the onset of multicellular life (e.g., differentiated versus undifferentiated multicellular organisms), or the appearance of "consciousness" -at face value a truly remarkable development in big history even if it is not typically acknowledged with a few exceptions like Henriques et al's "Tree of Knowledge" schema (Henriques et al, 2019).…”

Section: Some Other Challenges To Periodizing Big Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Review and Analysis of Big History Periodization Approaches

Solis,

LePoire

2023

JBH

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Big history may in fact be one very long “one damn thing after another,”* but even if we experience time as a continuum, dividing its expanse makes our discipline more “manageable” for psychological, teaching, research, discourse, and other reasons. Big history related books, like David Christian, Cynthia Stokes Brown, and Craig Benjamin’s 2014 textbook, Big History: Between Nothing and Everything, and several papers also often divide the time continuum into periods, but unlike other disciplines such as geology, we have no broadly agreed upon conventions for doing so. Big history pioneer, Fred Spier, in a recent JBH paper, “Thresholds of Big History – A Critical Review” (Vol 5, No. 1), criticized Christian’s “thresholds” schema for periodization and seemed skeptical of the very idea of periodization. As noted above, we believe that periodization is a worthwhile project to be undertaken, preferably by an ad hoc IBHA “working group.” We then suggest a general framework for how big history might be divided into time periods, and then anticipate some of the major challenges to developing any coherent periodization schema. So that we can better illustrate some of these challenges, we will end by taking deeper analyses of three possible big history “events” that might be used for demarcating one time period from another.

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Section: Some Other Challenges To Periodizing Big Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Review and Analysis of Big History Periodization Approaches

Solis,

LePoire

2023

JBH

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“…The combined Tree of Knowledge and Combogenesis frameworks of Henriques (2019) and Volk (2017) (respectively) demonstrates their focus on the periods of most rapid change, e.g., at the inflection point of transitions. This includes the Big Bang, the origin of life on Earth, the development of animal brains, the development of human culture, and the development of enlightened and scientific understanding.…”

Section: Comparison To Other Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthesizing Historical Research Leads to a Simple, Compatible, and Extensible Big History Framework and Periodization

LePoire

2023

JBH

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Many questions remain unanswered regarding how Big History events should be organized and interpreted. For example, should Big History be divided into periods or processes, when it is clearly a complex process of simultaneous interacting processes? In such an uncertain environment, how are models constructed and evaluated? When we look at Big History, at what level of abstraction do we start? This paper gleans important insights from a number of historical papers to develop a consistent view of Big History. It is important to consider many aspects of an evolving system. For example, how does the evolving system 1) learn from its experiences in the environment; 2) extract energy and resources to combat the trend towards chaos and higher entropy; 3) organize itself at multiple levels to meet new challenges? Various traditional scholarly disciplines contribute to various aspects of Big History, including astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary anthropology, and the history of civilizations. This suggests a base framework of cosmic and terrestrial phases. The terrestrial phase saw the sequential evolution of life, humans, and civilization. Based on this framework, the various disciplines’ timelines are consolidated along with their dynamic systems models. This base framework is then expanded to include more details. This simple approach meets many criteria for an effective framework: it integrates with knowledge from other disciplines; it provides a simple, understandable model; it can be extended in detail with nested transitions; and it immediately expresses the acceleration of evolving complex adaptive systems (CAS). Similarly, proposed frameworks offer slightly different perspectives.

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“…Furthermore, the "brain and neural networks are to an animal what DNA and genes are to a cell: a centralized, information relay and storage system." Indeed, following ToK's dimension of Matter, the dimensions of Life, Mind, and Culture are all analyzed to "emerge as a function of different semiotic or information processing systems" (Henriques et al, 2019: quotes from pages 11 and 1, respectively).…”

Section: The Number Of Realms Orders Dimensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Metapattern of General Evolutionary Dynamics and the Three Dynamical Realms of Big History

Volk

2020

JBH

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The goal of this paper is to formalize better the division of big history into three main stages (phases, eras). In my own work they are “dynamical realms,” 1. physical laws, 2. biological evolution, and 3. cultural evolution. I show a deep similarity in two mighty transitions; first, from dynamical realm 1 to 2, and then from 2 to 3. The common “metapattern” in these transitions is that of generalized evolutionary dynamics, which in both cases opened up vast new arenas of possibility space. I first present relevant conclu-sions from my book, Quarks to Culture. A “grand sequence” of twelve fundamental levels was forged through a repeated cycle of “combogenesis” spanning the dynamical realms as families of levels. Next, I provide examples of other scholars who have similarly weighed in on a three-fold arc; notably Christian, Spier, Chaisson, Rolston, Salk, and Voros (following Jansch). Like me, all have nominally recognized similarities between biological and cultural evolution as important in the dynamics of realms two and three. Generally, these scholars have not placed primary emphasis on general evolutionary dynamics as a multiply-instantiated process. The PVS metapattern for evolution (propagation, variation, and selection) is well established as overarching across many patterns in biology, following life’s origin. In culture the operation of general evolution-ary dynamics is, I suggest, dual-tier, consisting of cognitive PVS of individuals coupled to social PVS of groups. The emergence of realm-forming PVS-dynamics twice (biology, culture) created radically new ways to explore and stabilize patterns in expansive fields of diverse types within the respective dynamics. Thus, we can recognize a fundamental-ly similar reason (i.e., two emergent forms of evolutionary dynamics) for why so many scholars have correctly, in my opinion, discerned a threefold arc of big history. Im-portant as well in the flow of progress from quarks to culture were two only slightly less major instantiations of PVS-dynamics (though both crucial): an era of chemical evolution within the realm of physical laws, which led into the realm of biological evolution, and also the evolution of the animal cognitive learning PVS of trial, error, and success, which was essential to the path into cultural evolution. In concluding remarks, I note several outstanding issues: alternative proposals for five orders or four dimensions (i.e., divisions more than three in the arc of big history); the use of the word “evolution,” and three matrices (cosmosphere, biosphere, civisphere) that contain and are constituted by the varieties of patterns within the corresponding dynamical realms.

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The Tree of Knowledge System: A New Map for Big History

Cited by 9 publications

References 11 publications

Review and Analysis of Big History Periodization Approaches

Review and Analysis of Big History Periodization Approaches

Synthesizing Historical Research Leads to a Simple, Compatible, and Extensible Big History Framework and Periodization

The Metapattern of General Evolutionary Dynamics and the Three Dynamical Realms of Big History

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