At ¿rst sight, these huge scales may seem to deprive human history of any signi¿cance. But we will see in the next lecture that this is not quite the end of the story. By some criteria, such as that of “complexity,” we humans and our history are signi¿cant even on cosmological scales. The French philosopher Pascal wrote: “For what is Man in nature? A nothingness in respect to in¿nity, a whole in respect to nothingness, a median between nothing and everything” (Delsemme, Our Cosmic Origins, p. 1). Ŷ
Essential Reading Christian, Maps of Time, chap. 2, 53–55; app. 1. ———, “World History in Context.”
Supplementary Reading Calder, Timescale. Delsemme, Our Cosmic Origins, Introduction. Gould, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle. Kelley, The Home Planet.
Power of 10 Websites http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/ http://www.powersof10.com/ http://www.wordwizz.com/pwrsof10.htm
Questions to Consider 1. Do the huge spatial and temporal scales of modern cosmology diminish the signi¿cance of human beings?
2. Is it possible that, by placing humans in a larger context, they can help to illuminate the nature and meaning of human history? 13
