Day 3
August 3rd
SCHEDULE: DAY 3
Tuesday, 3 August 2021
Panel Abstracts & Speakers
Universal Panel 20: Finding Hope in the World
Hope is a rare and sometimes costly emotion in the world. Three presenters from India share their efforts to find hope, meaning and compassion. Not just talk, their actions and teaching inspire new directions in a globality being dominated by systems-thought and industrial commodification. They show we can all affect change, successful and meaningful change that gives us heart to make a new world inside of ourselves and around our homes and the planet.
Universal Panel 21: Big History of Access to Water : The Indian Context
Water is the basic need of all life. The diversity of India’s waterscapes, landscapes and societies has led to diverse water uses throughout its history. This dynamic panel considers questions, quandaries and solutions around water access, confronted by today’s rapidly transforming world.
Universal Panel 22: Managing Crisis in the World
Crisis is a by-product of our increased interactions around the planet. Tensions that we do not even recognize impact our day-to-day lives. How do manage this global fact of life?
Universal Panel 23: Indigenous and Tribal Society/ North East India
Indigenous and tribal societies exist all around our planet. They have cared for their lands and their families since the beginnings of humanity. Often ignored by high-tech visionaries of industrial and urban society, they hold the knowledge to revitalize a global society facing collapse. These scholars and activists from North East India share their experiences with many backgrounds of their tribal communities.
Universal Panel 24: The Little Big Histories Approach
Little Big History is a 21st century approach that was pioneered by Esther Quaedackers at the University of Amsterdam. It has been used to understand everyday items from Coca Cola and Cheetos to complex social problems. Esther shares her new uses for Little Big History as vital components in research and pedagogy, while Kartik and Diviya discuss their Little Big History about the human body and identity, and Chiara demonstrates a local big history from Italy.
Universal Panel 25: ReVisioning our World
Before we move much more forward into the catastrophes unfolding in our new century, we should sketch out some ideas for the routes to explore in our travels into the future. Our panellists consider some of these directions from their vantage points of big history, social planning, macro-anthropology and speculative thought and creativity.
Special Guest Speaker - Hirofumi Katayama
Hirofumi Katayama 片山博文
Faculty, Oberlin Big History Movement J.F. Oberlin University, Tokyo (Japan)
An Asian Approach for Big History
Western forms of Big History tend to focus on issues of complexity and collective learning. This formulation sees the history of the universe, life and humans as one of increasing complexity, in which modern society is the highest state of evolution. This paradigm presents serious difficulties for critiquing global problems, mainly because of its anthropocentric approach. In contrast, Chinese philosopher Wang Dongyue provides a new way of understanding existence by applying Laozi’s Taoist philosophy to the evolution of the universe. Wang regards the evolutionary process as a lessening in the potency of being, an intrinsic measure of stability. As potency decreases, a system becomes more unstable and its lost essence is supplemented by growth in complexity and new attributes. From this viewpoint, expansion of complexity and knowledge represent a loss, which now leads humanity to its present crises. Wang’s perspective suggests not only a way to overcome the difficulties of Western Big History but also an alternative Asian approach for constructing a more harmonious and multi-civilizational vision.
Big History After Hours (Indian Time) and Around the Globe
As the Earth rotates, our Asian homes enter deep night, while the sun rises in western landscapes. In order to allow all of us to share panels and events around the world, our friends and colleagues will continue to present panels and discussions convenient to their times. These will be recorded and be put up online, so our slumbering friends can share in the events.
Universal Panel 26: Wang's Universe: A Roundtable Discussion
Wang Dongyue is an independent scholar who spent twenty years developing a theory that links and tries to explain all natural, mental, and social phenomena. This panel consists of four reactions to his body of work. Michael Chiao will discuss the impact of this work on his entrepreneurship, Zora Chen on her scholarship, and Tan Chee Keong on his meditation. Lucy Laffitte will reflect on how Wang’s work complements and has contradictions with Big History.
Universal Panel 27: Starting Points for Integrating Big History into Education
Big Historical thinking and teaching does not automatically align with an existing educational approach. This panel will address issues, challenges, and strategies for introducing Big History into a curriculum. Starting points provide scope for research and to prepare a new learning environment where students have tools and resources to begin navigating a study in Big History.
Universal Panel 28: From the Depths of Bigotry to the Heights of Science & Creativity
Big History promotes intellectual and spiritual journeys that raise people above the hum-drum of daily activities and out of narrow vision that leads to bigotry and racism. These presentations begin with a pilgrimage into neuroscience and song and lead to views from the mountain top found in Big History as a philosophy of our existence. The presentations end by pointing to how a course on Big History offers stepping stones to the soaring discovery of human genetic kinship that leads away from violence founded on racial bigotry. Come explore the heights and vistas of Big History from three novel and lofty vantage points.
Universal Panel 29: Meaning, Action and Narrative: Many Paths, One Goal
How do we talk about what is meaningful in a scientific way? And in a way that makes space for other cultures and other viewpoints – even ones that may not share all of the modern, scientific assumptions about how the universe operates, what is real, what is not, what matters, and what doesn’t? This panel explores the limits of scientific objectivity in pursuing our shared goals of global enlightenment and environmental activism, as, for example, in the way we continue to craft our origin story. How do we work from within different traditions in pursuit of these aims without abandoning our scientific foundations?
Universal Panel 30: Our Anthropocene Legacy
The intersection of science and humanities intersects the field of Big History. The International Big History Association formed in 2010 and is arguably the most transdisciplinary of fields, with its pursuit of an integrated history of the cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity. However, today’s hyper-specialization in academia hinders our understanding of Big History and the Anthropocene in their complementary ability to raise awareness of the Earth’s natural origin and human-caused crises. With the Anthropocene regarded as the eighth and latest threshold in the Him cosmos, how might these fields become better known to illuminate this critical juncture in Earth history?
