[00:16] First, a video.
[00:24] Yes, it is a scrambled egg.
[00:29] But as you look at it,
[00:30] I hope you'll begin to feel
just slightly uneasy.
[00:36] Because you may notice
that what's actually happening
[00:40] is that the egg is unscrambling itself.
[00:42] And you'll now see the yolk
and the white have separated.
[00:44] And now they're going to be
poured back into the egg.
[00:48] And we all know in our heart of hearts
[00:50] that this is not the way
the universe works.
[00:54] A scrambled egg is mush --
tasty mush -- but it's mush.
[00:57] An egg is a beautiful, sophisticated thing
[01:00] that can create even more
sophisticated things,
[01:02] such as chickens.
[01:04] And we know in our heart of hearts
[01:06] that the universe does not travel
from mush to complexity.
[01:10] In fact, this gut instinct
[01:12] is reflected in one of the most
fundamental laws of physics,
[01:15] the second law of thermodynamics,
or the law of entropy.
[01:19] What that says basically
[01:20] is that the general
tendency of the universe
[01:24] is to move from order and structure
[01:27] to lack of order, lack of structure --
[01:30] in fact, to mush.
[01:31] And that's why that video
feels a bit strange.
[01:35] And yet, look around us.
[01:39] What we see around us
is staggering complexity.
[01:43] Eric Beinhocker estimates
that in New York City alone,
[01:46] there are some 10 billion SKUs,
or distinct commodities, being traded.
[01:50] That's hundreds of times
as many species as there are on Earth.
[01:55] And they're being traded by a species
of almost seven billion individuals,
[01:59] who are linked by trade,
travel, and the Internet
[02:02] into a global system
of stupendous complexity.
[02:07] So here's a great puzzle:
[02:10] in a universe ruled
by the second law of thermodynamics,
[02:14] how is it possible
[02:16] to generate the sort
of complexity I've described,
[02:19] the sort of complexity
represented by you and me
[02:23] and the convention center?
[02:26] Well, the answer seems to be,
[02:28] the universe can create complexity,
[02:31] but with great difficulty.
[02:33] In pockets,
[02:34] there appear
what my colleague, Fred Spier,
[02:37] calls "Goldilocks conditions" --
[02:39] not too hot, not too cold,
[02:41] just right for the creation of complexity.
[02:44] And slightly more complex things appear.
[02:46] And where you have
slightly more complex things,
[02:48] you can get slightly more complex things.
[02:51] And in this way, complexity
builds stage by stage.
[02:56] Each stage is magical
[02:58] because it creates the impression
of something utterly new
[03:02] appearing almost out of nowhere
in the universe.
[03:04] We refer in big history to these moments
as threshold moments.
[03:09] And at each threshold,
the going gets tougher.
[03:12] The complex things get more fragile,
[03:15] more vulnerable;
[03:17] the Goldilocks conditions
get more stringent,
[03:20] and it's more difficult
to create complexity.
[03:24] Now, we, as extremely complex creatures,
[03:28] desperately need to know this story
[03:30] of how the universe creates complexity
despite the second law,
[03:34] and why complexity means
vulnerability and fragility.
[03:40] And that's the story
that we tell in big history.
[03:43] But to do it, you have do something
[03:45] that may, at first sight,
seem completely impossible.
[03:48] You have to survey the whole
history of the universe.
[03:52] So let's do it.
[03:54] (Laughter)
[03:56] Let's begin by winding the timeline back
[03:59] 13.7 billion years,
[04:02] to the beginning of time.
[04:12] Around us, there's nothing.
[04:14] There's not even time or space.
[04:18] Imagine the darkest,
emptiest thing you can
[04:22] and cube it a gazillion times
and that's where we are.
[04:25] And then suddenly,
[04:28] bang!
[04:29] A universe appears, an entire universe.
[04:31] And we've crossed our first threshold.
[04:33] The universe is tiny;
it's smaller than an atom.
[04:35] It's incredibly hot.
[04:37] It contains everything
that's in today's universe,
[04:39] so you can imagine, it's busting.
[04:41] And it's expanding at incredible speed.
[04:44] And at first, it's just a blur,
[04:46] but very quickly distinct things
begin to appear in that blur.
[04:49] Within the first second,
[04:51] energy itself shatters
into distinct forces
[04:54] including electromagnetism and gravity.
[04:57] And energy does something
else quite magical:
[04:59] it congeals to form matter --
[05:03] quarks that will create protons
[05:05] and leptons that include electrons.
[05:07] And all of that happens
in the first second.
[05:09] Now we move forward 380,000 years.
[05:14] That's twice as long as humans
have been on this planet.
[05:17] And now simple atoms appear
of hydrogen and helium.
[05:23] Now I want to pause for a moment,
[05:25] 380,000 years after the origins
of the universe,
[05:28] because we actually know quite a lot
about the universe at this stage.
[05:32] We know above all
that it was extremely simple.
[05:35] It consisted of huge clouds
of hydrogen and helium atoms,
[05:39] and they have no structure.
[05:41] They're really a sort of cosmic mush.
[05:44] But that's not completely true.
[05:46] Recent studies
[05:48] by satellites such as the WMAP satellite
[05:51] have shown that, in fact,
[05:52] there are just tiny differences
in that background.
[05:55] What you see here,
[05:57] the blue areas are about a thousandth
of a degree cooler
[06:01] than the red areas.
[06:03] These are tiny differences,
[06:04] but it was enough
for the universe to move on
[06:06] to the next stage of building complexity.
[06:08] And this is how it works.
[06:10] Gravity is more powerful
where there's more stuff.
[06:15] So where you get slightly denser areas,
[06:18] gravity starts compacting clouds
of hydrogen and helium atoms.
[06:22] So we can imagine the early universe
breaking up into a billion clouds.
[06:25] And each cloud is compacted,
[06:27] gravity gets more powerful
as density increases,
[06:30] the temperature begins to rise
at the center of each cloud,
[06:33] and then, at the center,
[06:34] the temperature crosses
the threshold temperature
[06:37] of 10 million degrees,
[06:39] protons start to fuse,
[06:41] there's a huge release of energy,
[06:44] and --
[06:45] bam!
[06:46] We have our first stars.
[06:48] From about 200 million years
after the Big Bang,
[06:52] stars begin to appear
all through the universe,
[06:56] billions of them.
[06:57] And the universe is now
significantly more interesting
[07:00] and more complex.
[07:03] Stars will create
the Goldilocks conditions
[07:06] for crossing two new thresholds.
[07:08] When very large stars die,
[07:11] they create temperatures so high
[07:13] that protons begin to fuse
in all sorts of exotic combinations,
[07:17] to form all the elements
of the periodic table.
[07:20] If, like me, you're wearing a gold ring,
[07:22] it was forged in a supernova explosion.
[07:25] So now the universe
is chemically more complex.
[07:29] And in a chemically more complex universe,
[07:31] it's possible to make more things.
[07:33] And what starts happening
is that, around young suns,
[07:37] young stars,
[07:39] all these elements combine,
they swirl around,
[07:41] the energy of the star stirs them around,
[07:44] they form particles, they form snowflakes,
they form little dust motes,
[07:49] they form rocks, they form asteroids,
[07:51] and eventually,
they form planets and moons.
[07:53] And that is how our
solar system was formed,
[07:56] four and a half billion years ago.
[08:00] Rocky planets like our Earth
are significantly more complex than stars
[08:05] because they contain
a much greater diversity of materials.
[08:08] So we've crossed a fourth
threshold of complexity.
[08:12] Now, the going gets tougher.
[08:16] The next stage introduces entities
that are significantly more fragile,
[08:20] significantly more vulnerable,
[08:22] but they're also much more creative
[08:25] and much more capable
of generating further complexity.
[08:28] I'm talking, of course,
about living organisms.
[08:32] Living organisms are created by chemistry.
[08:34] We are huge packages of chemicals.
[08:38] So, chemistry is dominated
by the electromagnetic force.
[08:41] That operates over smaller
scales than gravity,
[08:43] which explains why you and I
are smaller than stars or planets.
[08:48] Now, what are the ideal
conditions for chemistry?
[08:50] What are the Goldilocks conditions?
[08:52] Well, first, you need energy,
[08:55] but not too much.
[08:56] In the center of a star,
there's so much energy
[08:58] that any atoms that combine
will just get busted apart again.
[09:02] But not too little.
[09:03] In intergalactic space,
[09:04] there's so little energy
that atoms can't combine.
[09:08] What you want is just the right amount,
[09:10] and planets, it turns out, are just right,
[09:12] because they're close to stars,
but not too close.
[09:15] You also need a great diversity
of chemical elements,
[09:19] and you need liquids, such as water.
[09:22] Why?
[09:23] Well, in gases, atoms move
past each other so fast
[09:27] that they can't hitch up.
[09:28] In solids,
[09:30] atoms are stuck together, they can't move.
[09:33] In liquids,
[09:35] they can cruise and cuddle
[09:38] and link up to form molecules.
[09:41] Now, where do you find
such Goldilocks conditions?
[09:43] Well, planets are great,
[09:45] and our early Earth was almost perfect.
[09:50] It was just the right
distance from its star
[09:52] to contain huge oceans of liquid water.
[09:54] And deep beneath those oceans,
[09:56] at cracks in the Earth's crust,
[09:58] you've got heat seeping up
from inside the Earth,
[10:01] and you've got a great
diversity of elements.
[10:03] So at those deep oceanic vents,
[10:05] fantastic chemistry began to happen,
[10:08] and atoms combined in all sorts
of exotic combinations.
[10:12] But of course, life is more
than just exotic chemistry.
[10:17] How do you stabilize those huge molecules
[10:20] that seem to be viable?
[10:22] Well, it's here that life introduces
an entirely new trick.
[10:28] You don't stabilize the individual;
[10:30] you stabilize the template,
[10:32] the thing that carries information,
[10:35] and you allow the template to copy itself.
[10:37] And DNA, of course,
is the beautiful molecule
[10:40] that contains that information.
[10:42] You'll be familiar
with the double helix of DNA.
[10:45] Each rung contains information.
[10:48] So, DNA contains information
about how to make living organisms.
[10:53] And DNA also copies itself.
[10:55] So, it copies itself
[10:56] and scatters the templates
through the ocean.
[10:59] So the information spreads.
[11:01] Notice that information
has become part of our story.
[11:04] The real beauty of DNA though
is in its imperfections.
[11:07] As it copies itself,
once in every billion rungs,
[11:11] there tends to be an error.
[11:13] And what that means
is that DNA is, in effect, learning.
[11:18] It's accumulating new ways
of making living organisms
[11:21] because some of those errors work.
[11:23] So DNA's learning
[11:24] and it's building greater
diversity and greater complexity.
[11:27] And we can see this happening
over the last four billion years.
[11:30] For most of that time of life on Earth,
[11:33] living organisms have been
relatively simple --
[11:35] single cells.
[11:36] But they had great diversity,
and, inside, great complexity.
[11:40] Then from about 600
to 800 million years ago,
[11:43] multi-celled organisms appear.
[11:45] You get fungi, you get fish,
[11:48] you get plants,
[11:49] you get amphibia, you get reptiles,
[11:52] and then, of course,
you get the dinosaurs.
[11:55] And occasionally, there are disasters.
[11:59] Sixty-five million years ago,
[12:01] an asteroid landed on Earth
[12:03] near the Yucatan Peninsula,
[12:05] creating conditions equivalent
to those of a nuclear war,
[12:08] and the dinosaurs were wiped out.
[12:11] Terrible news for the dinosaurs,
[12:14] but great news
for our mammalian ancestors,
[12:18] who flourished
[12:19] in the niches left empty by the dinosaurs.
[12:22] And we human beings are part
of that creative evolutionary pulse
[12:28] that began 65 million years ago
[12:30] with the landing of an asteroid.
[12:33] Humans appeared about 200,000 years ago.
[12:36] And I believe we count
as a threshold in this great story.
[12:40] Let me explain why.
[12:42] We've seen that DNA learns in a sense,
[12:45] it accumulates information.
[12:47] But it is so slow.
[12:50] DNA accumulates information
through random errors,
[12:53] some of which just happen to work.
[12:56] But DNA had actually generated
a faster way of learning:
[12:59] it had produced organisms with brains,
[13:01] and those organisms
can learn in real time.
[13:05] They accumulate information, they learn.
[13:07] The sad thing is, when they die,
[13:10] the information dies with them.
[13:12] Now what makes humans different
is human language.
[13:16] We are blessed with a language,
a system of communication,
[13:19] so powerful and so precise
[13:21] that we can share what we've learned
with such precision
[13:25] that it can accumulate
in the collective memory.
[13:28] And that means
[13:29] it can outlast the individuals
who learned that information,
[13:33] and it can accumulate
from generation to generation.
[13:36] And that's why, as a species,
we're so creative and so powerful,
[13:40] and that's why we have a history.
[13:43] We seem to be the only species
in four billion years
[13:46] to have this gift.
[13:48] I call this ability collective learning.
[13:51] It's what makes us different.
[13:53] We can see it at work
in the earliest stages of human history.
[13:57] We evolved as a species
in the savanna lands of Africa,
[14:01] but then you see humans migrating
into new environments,
[14:04] into desert lands, into jungles,
[14:06] into the Ice Age tundra of Siberia --
[14:09] tough, tough environment --
[14:10] into the Americas, into Australasia.
[14:13] Each migration involved learning --
[14:15] learning new ways of exploiting
the environment,
[14:17] new ways of dealing
with their surroundings.
[14:19] Then 10,000 years ago,
[14:21] exploiting a sudden
change in global climate
[14:24] with the end of the last ice age,
[14:26] humans learned to farm.
[14:28] Farming was an energy bonanza.
[14:31] And exploiting that energy,
human populations multiplied.
[14:34] Human societies got larger,
denser, more interconnected.
[14:39] And then from about 500 years ago,
[14:42] humans began to link up globally
[14:44] through shipping, through trains,
[14:46] through telegraph, through the Internet,
[14:49] until now we seem to form
a single global brain
[14:54] of almost seven billion individuals.
[14:56] And that brain is learning at warp speed.
[15:00] And in the last 200 years,
something else has happened.
[15:03] We've stumbled on another energy bonanza
[15:05] in fossil fuels.
[15:07] So fossil fuels and collective
learning together
[15:09] explain the staggering complexity
we see around us.
[15:16] So --
[15:18] Here we are,
[15:20] back at the convention center.
[15:21] We've been on a journey,
a return journey, of 13.7 billion years.
[15:26] I hope you agree this is a powerful story.
[15:29] And it's a story in which humans
play an astonishing and creative role.
[15:34] But it also contains warnings.
[15:37] Collective learning is a very,
very powerful force,
[15:41] and it's not clear
that we humans are in charge of it.
[15:47] I remember very vividly
as a child growing up in England,
[15:50] living through the Cuban Missile Crisis.
[15:52] For a few days, the entire biosphere
[15:56] seemed to be on the verge of destruction.
[15:59] And the same weapons are still here,
[16:02] and they are still armed.
[16:05] If we avoid that trap,
others are waiting for us.
[16:08] We're burning fossil fuels at such a rate
[16:11] that we seem to be undermining
the Goldilocks conditions
[16:14] that made it possible
for human civilizations
[16:16] to flourish over the last 10,000 years.
[16:20] So what big history can do
[16:22] is show us the nature
of our complexity and fragility
[16:26] and the dangers that face us,
[16:28] but it can also show us
our power with collective learning.
[16:32] And now, finally --
[16:35] this is what I want.
[16:39] I want my grandson, Daniel,
[16:42] and his friends and his generation,
[16:45] throughout the world,
[16:47] to know the story of big history,
[16:49] and to know it so well
[16:52] that they understand
both the challenges that face us
[16:55] and the opportunities that face us.
[16:58] And that's why a group of us
[17:00] are building a free, online syllabus
[17:03] in big history
[17:04] for high-school students
throughout the world.
[17:07] We believe that big history
[17:09] will be a vital
intellectual tool for them,
[17:12] as Daniel and his generation
[17:15] face the huge challenges
[17:17] and also the huge opportunities
[17:19] ahead of them at this threshold moment
[17:23] in the history of our beautiful planet.
[17:26] I thank you for your attention.
[17:28] (Applause)