Discovery channels
Big History’ is the name given to an emerging field of study that describes the evolution from the big bang up to the modern era. This is an enormous span of time—nearly 14 billion years—so it is understandably called ‘big’ history. However, it is also a shallow view of history because it leaves out themes and ideas such as consciousness, meaning, and purpose. This article seeks to deepen big history by bringing in these neglected themes through the paradigm of a living universe.1
To begin, it is helpful to briefly mention several of the basic assumptions of materialism that establish the foundation for the current description of big history. ‘Materialism’ is the belief that only physical reality truly exists and nothing else. In this view, all things are composed of physical matter and all phenomena, including consciousness, are the result of mechanical interactions of matter. Physical matter is regarded as the sole cause of every possible occurrence, including human thought, feeling, and action. In this view, the universe is dead at the foundations—inanimate, mindless, and without consciousness. Materialism contrasts with the living systems view that there is vastly more to reality than interactions of physical matter. For example, given recent findings that 95 percent of the known universe is non-material and invisible, it implies that materialism applies to only a very small fraction of the overall universe.
Source
