Maps of Time by David Christian, University of California Press, $34.95/拢22.95, ISBN 0520235002
TO SYNTHESISE 13 billion years of Earth history is David Christian鈥檚 brave aim in Maps of Time. He not only takes in the history of the universe itself but has the chutzpah to take a quick look into the next 5 billion years. An academic historian based at San Diego State University, he is all too aware of the potential pitfalls of such an ambitious project. So he takes pains to explain why it is worthwhile to try to unite everything from astronomy to human history, the whole macrocosm and microcosm, in a single narrative. He points out that 鈥渨e need to know where we are going, [and] where we have come from鈥�.
It is indeed strange that, for the first time in many millennia, a significant number of people do not subscribe to any coherent world view. Thanks to western science and materialism, a constantly changing and incomplete narrative has replaced the old Judaeo-Christian-Islamic belief in the Genesis creation story. And it is even more unsettling that the details of this new science-based story are internally disputed by its adherents and promulgators.
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Some consider that there is no such thing as truth, while others claim that the scientific version is but one of many equally valid culture-bound narratives. As Christian says, at the moment we seem 鈥渋ncapable of offering a unified account of how things came about鈥�. He regards this disorientation as harmful because it adds to what the French sociologist Emile Durkheim referred to as our anomie, the sense of not fitting in.
Christian is clearly no novice to the subject, having honed his skills of delivering 鈥渂ig history鈥� by teaching it to undergraduates. As a result, his book is remarkably successful. It has the essential effect of first stimulating and then retaining the reader鈥檚 interest. There have to be short cuts: Earth鈥檚 early evolution and the origin of life take up the first quarter and human prehistory and history have the lion鈥檚 share of the rest. Such syntheses can easily become tedious 鈥� but not here. The odd mastermind may quibble over details of a special subject but, as far as I can judge from the copious notes and bibliography, Christian has done his homework.
One of the many odd features of modern society is that despite having access to more information than at any other time, we do not normally teach the 鈥渂ig story鈥�. It is high time more scientists and historians, like Christian, answered Erwin Schr枚dinger鈥檚 appeal to 鈥渆mbark on a synthesis of facts and theories, albeit with second-hand and incomplete knowledge鈥even]鈥t the risk of making fools of ourselves鈥�.