Ian Hesketh (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for the History of European Discourses, University of Queensland) will be speaking on:
"The Story of Big History"
Thursday, November 27th, 4:00-5:30pm in Buchanan Tower 1197.
The UBC Node is pleased to support this event.
Abstract:
Big History is an intriguing new interdisciplinary approach that seeks to bridge the humanities–natural science divide by constructing a grand historical narrative that places human history within the context of the origins of the universe. Much has been made of big history’s incredible interdisciplinarity but what has largely been ignored is the aesthetic nature of big history, which is so powerfully displayed in its simple and elegant narrative of ultimate origins. Thus, this article contextualises the form of the big history narrative in order to understand the aesthetic and moral choices that have been made in constructing this grand anthropocentric tale. From this perspective, it argues that there is little to distinguish big history from popular science literature, most notably the subgenre known as the “evolutional epic” that also seeks to tell a synthetic anthropocentric cosmic history of everything
Dr. Hesketh will be circulating this paper in advance. If you plan to attend please contact Monica Brown for a copy: (mm2brown@interchange.ubc.ca).
The flyer can be seen here:
http://sts-arts.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2014/11/Hesketh-talk-poster.pdf
