The Ethical Imperative of Big History: Toward a Gaian Wisdom

Sean Kelly, Ph.D.

California Institute of Integral Studies

The following rather dense paragraphs are intentionally provocative. I realize that the field of Big History is not monolithic, that there is no formal dogma and no official imprimatur, and that real efforts have been made to erect and maintain the movement’s “big tent”. At the same time, it is my impression that certain presuppositions remain dominant, if not always explicitly stated—namely, that Big History should abide by the modernist strict separation of facts from values; that accounts of the cosmos and of the human within the cosmos should be couched in purely objective terms; and that, in particular, the overarching narratives of Big History should eschew questions of meaning or purpose. The following reflections, by contrast, invite the reader to consider the possibility that our current planetary predicament demands that we question such presuppositions. With civilization and complex life itself in the balance, I suggest that Big History is charged with an ethical imperative explicitly to seek not only knowledge, but wisdom. Recognizing my own considerable limitations in this respect, I beg the reader’s indulgence, and only hope that my proposal will stimulate fruitful dialogue around the issues addressed.

1. The time elapsed since the emergence of a planetary humanity, the most recent threshold crossed in our neighborhood of the evolving cosmos, is quantitatively insignificant relative to the cosmic time-scale, yet its qualitative significance, in both theoretical and practical terms, is paramount. Runaway climate change, loss of habitats, and the sixth mass extinction of species underway signal the potential unraveling of the fabric of life, and with it, the human organizational complexity that allowed for the rise of Big History in the first place. The shift in perspective from quantitative scales to the qualitative singularity, and criticality, of our moment invites us to engage in deep questioning about the goal of evolution, the nature of the good, and of our ultimate concern.

2. The human presence has now saturated the biosphere and given birth to what many now term “the Anthropocene.”  If humanity is to succeed in making the transition to the next threshold of complexity toward a truly sustainable Earth community, however, civilization will need to be regenerated along Gaian lines. Human social, economic, technological, and political activities must become synergistic with the principles of planetary ecology. Gaian or Earth system sciences[i] have a leading role to play here in alerting us to key guiding principles, as do the related insights of Big History, which provide the longer-term perspective. In both cases, however, the urgency of our planetary moment demands that we grapple with ideas, and ideals, that transcend the traditional limits of science-based inquiry: these include Earth justice and Earth law (including the rights of nature and proper relations to the global commons), Gaian governance, and more broadly what might be recognized as Gaian wisdom.

3. A major goal of Big History is to provide a more comprehensive cosmological and evolutionary context for the human project. One initial effect of the vast time scales of this contextualization is the diminishment of the human to quantitative insignificance. Given what many consider to be a misguided and pernicious anthropocentrism, such a diminishment could be considered a virtue. At the same time, if there is any merit to the notion that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch, such quantitative diminishment must be coupled with the recognition of a qualitative singularity. While all major evolutionary thresholds (Big Bang, ignition of stars, origin of life, collective learning, agriculture, the modern revolution) are in some sense singular, the current moment presents us with an unprecedented bifurcation point. The closest parallel is the cretaceous-paleogene mass extinction event of 65 million years ago. The mass extinction now underway (coupled with climate change and habitat loss), however, involves not only the unraveling of complex life on Earth—which of course is the most fundamental threat—but also the unraveling of subsequent thresholds of complexity, especially the core elements of the modern civilizational revolution, along with the conditions for terrestrially coordinated collective learning.

4. The qualitatively singular context of human existence, and therefore also of the project of Big History, is the current, accelerating planetary crisis. One direction leads further into the planetary great unraveling. The other direction points to what Joanna Macy, David Korten, and others call the Great Turning toward a truly Gaian civilization. The word “Gaian” here suggests, following the lead of James Lovelock, a dynamically stable, self-regulating planetary system capable of sustaining maximally diversified complex life, including the human! “Civilization” indicates the desire to preserve not only the biological complexity of the human genome, but human cultural depth and diversity as well.

5. The emergence of a Gaian consciousness—including not only knowledge of Gaia’s probable genesis and evolution, but also an understanding of the complex character of the later modern, or (as I prefer to call it) planetary era and the integral role of the human in the history and fate of this era—represents the latest and most complex evolutionary threshold of which we have any evidence. It is also the first threshold to make explicit the cosmological truth that each evolutionary threshold, or the representative systems associated with those thresholds, include as they transcend the levels of organizational complexity attained by the previous systems. This truth is made theoretically explicit through Big History-type narratives, which typically include such insights as how living organization is metamorphosed stardust, or how human cells preserve evidence of symbiogenetic mergers of simpler organisms, or how modern humans preserve genetic markers from our common mother, “mitochondrial Eve”. As noted above, however, this truth is also practically evident in the fact that human behavior is now the critical deciding factor in the question of whether or not the majority of our elder cousins (among the complex organisms, at least) on the tree of life will survive into the next century.

6. To be true to the qualitative context of our planetary moment, some big historians, at least, will need to concern themselves with some of the big questions previously reserved for philosophers and theologians. Along with the question of the origin and evolution of the cosmos, the Earth, and the human, those of us with the privilege of being able to do so must also ask the question of “the good life”, of how we ought to live, not only in general terms, but relative to the here and now of our planetary predicament.

7. Clearly, any adequate engagement with the big questions will need to draw not only from multiple disciplines, including the sciences (natural and social) and humanities as currently constituted, but also from more transgressive modes of inquiry that mix, cross, and even transcend the disciplines as normally conceived, such as mythically/imaginally inflected narratives and transdisciplinary (meta)points-of-view. While still devoted to truth, serious inquiry can no longer in good faith style itself as “disinterested”. There is a residue of value (and of feeling, intuition, symbol) in the most stubborn of facts, and more than a residue in the most tested of theories. This is all the more the case the more comprehensive, or “Big”, the theory. While Big History is not, strictly speaking, a theory, it is a way of seeing or “viewing” (from the Greek, theorein) things, and not just some things, but everything! It is therefore the most egregious form of performative contradiction if, in attempting to think the Whole, one would persist in the modernist fantasy of a “pure”, “disinterested”, “objective” account of the cosmos, uncontaminated by such things as meaning and value (not to mention metaphors, symbols, and even myths). Not only have philosophers of science (Whitehead, Kuhn, Holton, Feyerabend, among others) long recognized as much, but so too have the most creative of the scientists themselves (Einstein, Bohr, Schroedinger, Pauli, Bohm, Prigogine, to name some of the most prominent).

8. What this means is that the knowledge pursued, produced, and promulgated by Big Historians should at some point be explicitly yoked to the ideal of wisdom, in both its theoretical and practical modalities. In neither case is there room for claims to absolute truth or certainty, though individuals are of course free to argue the coherence or adequacy of any account that claims, explicitly or not, to be not only in some sense true, but wise and good.

9. Bracketing the question of metaphysical absolutes, we might at least agree on the value of focusing our gaze on Gaia, our planet-home, as the “concrete universal”[ii] or proximate context of our cosmic and anthropological being, our origin and destiny. Honoring this context, the project of Big History would embrace the ethical imperative to resist the forces—social, economic, political, ideological, psychological, spiritual—contributing to the great unraveling and instead devote itself to the Great Turning towards a truly Gaian civilization. Along with this resistance, the ethical imperative of Big History, in service to the Great Turning, requires the cultivation of a Gaian wisdom. Again, while abjuring any claims to absolute truth or certainty, the broad outlines, at least, of such a wisdom can be proposed.[iii]

10. Theoretically, such a wisdom would be grounded in a Gaia-centric evolutionary narrative of suitably transdisciplinary depth and scope. Going further and deeper than mere inter- or multi-disciplinarity, the transdisciplinarity of Big History would seek to bring to conscious awareness the root metaphors and otherwise unconscious paradigmatic assumptions (such as mechanistic or reductive naturalism) that not only structure but often limit the creative (and moral) imagination. It would deepen its already acute attention to contexts (cosmic, social, cultural, planetary) in all of their complexity. It would relinquish, once and for all, the idea of a “view from nowhere”, and therefore reintegrate the subject/observer in its consideration of all objects and matters of fact.[iv] It is not a question here of falling into a purely constructivist hall of mirrors, but rather of cultivating a sustained reflexivity in thinking, especially when striving to think the whole, whether this be the wider cosmos or the concrete universal of Gaia, our planet-home.

11. The reintegration of the subject is not only theoretically but practically necessary for the cultivation of wisdom. Practical wisdom demands that science recover its con-science. To begin with, this will involve the recognition that, just as all facts are theory-laden, so theories (or accounts of what is the case, how it became such, or why it is such) and the choice or articulation of research problems are value-laden, which is to say that they have ethical consequences for humans and the world we inhabit. Being true to the facts is not a matter of mere reporting, but of commitment to the matter at hand, which for all of us now is the planet in peril, with civilization and complex life itself in the balance.

12. Though Big History is not itself a science, if it is to be true to the facts and committed to the matter at hand, if it is to affirm the ideal and practice of science with a conscience, it will need to make room for and even encourage consideration of the teleological dimension—that is, the dimension of value, meaning, purpose, and goals—as intrinsic to any sufficiently complex and truly transdisciplinary account of both cosmos and anthropos. In practical terms, such consideration would include, and be guided by, the commitment to a just and sustainable, if not flourishing, Earth community. Proponents of Big History, in other words, cannot in good conscience remain silent on matters of politics, economics, and social policy. The ethical imperative of Big History calls for its advocates to take a stand on all matters that touch upon the growing threat to the planet’s biosphere.[v] The question here is one not only of survival, but of justice on a planetary scale. It is a question of Earth justice, which recognizes the intrinsic right—in the sense of its rightness (we affirm that it is good to be such)—of biotic communities, or the “land”, as Leopold would have it, to flourish in mutual harmony. This includes human communities, of course, a vast portion of which continues, along with growing numbers of non-human species and populations, to suffer beneath the crushing weight of industrial growth society.

13. It may in fact be too late to halt the mounting wave of extinctions and long-term degradation of the biosphere. As long as there remains even a chance of avoiding the worst, however, those who can, must speak out on behalf of those most threatened, and ultimately on behalf of the entire Earth community. Arguably, the ones most qualified to speak in this way will be those who most embody, however imperfectly and provisionally, the kind of wisdom that best reflects the complex evolutionary character of Gaia, our planet-home. The trans- or meta-discipline of Big History has a vital role to play in educating such voices, a role heavy with ethical responsibility. Will it stand by, satisfied with the modernist ideal of (pseudo-)disengaged inquiry while business as usual condemns the planet to ruin, or will it strive to actualize its full potential and be an advocate for Gaia, in and through whom we have always lived and have our being?