Origin Story: A Big History of Everything Hardcover – May 22, 2018

“Origin Story, A Big History of Everything”, by David Christian, 2018 By any measure the last 75 years, in my lifetime, have seen the largest explosion of knowledge in Human history. For millennia humans have sought the wisdom of the gods; How the universe and humans came to be. I feel very fortunate to have witnessed this epochal achievement. Working as an engineer at the Cape I witnessed the first Pioneer spacecrafts and Apollo moon missions blast off. I sort of realized at the time that we were entering a new age of exploration and technological innovation, but I could have never imagined the discoveries yet to come; Billions of Galaxies discovered by the Hubble Space telescope, Black holes, Gravity waves, Robot vehicles roving on Mars, super computers in phones or the unlocking of the genetic blueprint of life. Almost every field from Astrophysics Physics, Quantum mechanics, Biology, Neurobiology, Genetics, Geology to Paleontology and Paleoanthropology has seen groundbreaking discoveries that have changed our understanding of the universe and our place in it.Now comes an amazing new book that weaves this knowledge into a surprisingly readable 300-page narrative story of the universe for the last 13 billion years. Up till now to attain this updated knowledge you would have to read separate books or take separate courses in each of the above specialties. Christian takes us on an epochal journey from the first milliseconds of the big bang, the formation of atoms and elements to the structural formation of the universe. From there we are taken to the formation of chemical elements to the formation of the earth and the beginning of life in the form of single celled prokaryotes 3 billion years ago. Photosynthesis, Cyanobacteria, plate tectonics all play a role in making our planet unique in our solar system as the only place hospitable for life. Then evolve the Eukaryotes through a combining of more primitive cells to form a new type of oxygen breathing cell, which make all multicellular animals and us possible. With the evolution of large bodied animals comes the evolution of large brains and consciousness. With the appearance of humans comes sharing and generational transmission of information and technologies. This ability proves crucial to the development of globe changing events such as agriculture and the scientific revolution. Along the way to us there were all sorts of blind alleys, near miss encounters and apocalyptic disaster scenarios that didn’t completely play out just by good luck and serendipity. One such occurrence caused by volcanism, happened 70,000 years ago and brought the number of our species to just 10,000 individuals and almost to the brink of extinction. This makes our life and all life on earth as we see it now a miraculous and beautiful occurrence.In a sense this book while conveying the history of the universe and human societies always emphasizes throughout the fact that energy flows, the laws of thermodynamics are the fundamental factors operating in the physical universe, biological systems and human civilizations. We learn “wealth never really consists of things; it consists of control over energy flows that make, move, mine and transform things”. Agrarian societies and empires could never bring wealth to a majority of the population because they could never produce enough surplus energy. They could only concentrate wealth in an elite ruling class of perhaps 10%-15% of the population. The discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels in the last 200 years, which are nothing more than reservoirs of ancient sunlight, has engendered a huge explosion in the energy, wealth available to human societies and made possible the almost sevenfold explosion of human population, middle classes and advanced western civilization. However, we learn here that the earth has undergone numerous mass extinctions caused by CO2 induced global warming, the last catastrophic one, over 50 million years ago called the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum that wiped out over 50% of all genera on earth. That event was caused by a huge explosion of volcanism emitted CO2. By burning fossil fuels and emitting huge quantities of CO2 in the same manner, are we at the beginning of just such an event? Christian emphasizes that we have reached a critical point in the evolution of life on earth where one species, us, now control the fate of our entire ecosystem. We can put into play our knowledge of how the universe works that we have assiduously garnered over the last several hundred years or we can ignore what we know, instead let greed and tribalism reign and plunge our planet into an unknown future of chaos and destruction where our very survival will be at risk. This must be one of the great turning points in history like the invention of agriculture or the discovery of fossil fuels where mankind has no choice but to utilize his innovative abilities and technologies to harness the sun’s energies directly. I don’t think I have ever encountered a book with more knowledge condensed into one place in such a readable form. You want wisdom and perspective? Read this! JACK

The book covers the history of the world from the Big Bang through present and beyond. An ambitious undertaking, the book is readable, interesting and thought provoking. A lot of time is spent setting the stage for the advent of humanity, and then the analysis of humanity on the ecosystem. A fun book to read and get you thinking.

A very enjoyable and informative read. Purchased from a library as "used" on Amazon. The book was basically brand new and delivered in a very timely fashion, I enjoy highlighting and make notes in texts (like college 50 years ago) - so I really appreciate being able to buy good hardback versions of popular non-fiction so I can annotate them and use them as reference books later.

I was surprised that the author looked at the origin of the universe, the earth, life and evolution in a different sense. He discussed it in terms of energy and paying an entropy tax. For example, maximum entropy is where everything is ultimately heading. Maximum entropy can be though of as maximum randomness, like gas molecules in a bottle. It is also the least order. Life goes against everything going downhill. It does so by taking energy, directly or indirectly from the sun; but a tax is paid for the right to have order instead of chaos. The author explains this, though, not in a dull way but in an interesting way. The writing is well done and well researched. If you think this might be just a rehash of the big bang, exploding stars, the formation of the solar system and earth, and the origin of life and its evolution as is covered in many other books, be expected to be surprised. This author approaches it from a different angle and makes it interesting.

The book is factual as best as I understand the science, but I didn’t particularly enjoy reading it. Too many words.

I have never heard the "history of everything" all wrapped up in one telling before this. The author uses common language to help me understand grand processes going on in the universe, and takes me all the way through to the present and even takes some shots at the future. I felt like a time traveler observing the creation of the universe, through the coalescing of matter and the origins of the elements, the formation and stars and planets, the beginnings of life, mass extinctions, the rise of mammals and eventually humans, and the building of civilizations. What a ride! And the author is ever mindful of the entropy tax (or complexity tax, as he sometimes called it). Such an interesting perspective. I highly recommend!