Big History

Threshold 8 · The modern revolution

Modernity Strikes

The world's societies connect, science becomes a method, fossil fuels power an industrial revolution, and humans become a force on the planet's scale.

275 years ago About 1500 CE to the present 0 of 5 lessons ready
JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Threshold 1: The Beginning, 1 January, 00:00:00 1 Threshold 2: Formation of Stars, 5 January 2 Threshold 3: Chemicals Cook Up, 8 January 3 Threshold 4: The Early Earth, 2 September 4 Threshold 5: Emergence of Life, 30 September 5 Threshold 6: Collective Learning, 31 December, 23:48:33 6 Threshold 7: The Agricultural Revolution, 31 December, 23:59:32 7 Threshold 8: Modernity Strikes, 31 December, 23:59:59 8 Threshold 8 31 December, 23:59:59
On the cosmic calendar this threshold begins on 31 December, 23:59:59.

This chapter covers the last half second of the cosmic year, and it is the one you are living in. Within five centuries the separate worlds of humanity were joined into one, a new way of knowing called science was invented, and the energy stored in coal and oil was released to drive machines.

The result is the world of the last two hundred years: population, wealth, information and environmental change all accelerating at once. For the first time a single species is changing the planet’s climate, chemistry and biology on a geological scale.

The chapter ends at the present. What comes next has a chapter of its own.

Lessons

  1. 8.1
    The Columbian Exchange

    1492 and the joining of the world's biological and human systems.

    Planned
  2. 8.2
    The Scientific Revolution

    A new way of knowing: evidence, instruments and doubt.

    Planned
  3. 8.3
    Fossil fuels and the Industrial Revolution

    Coal, steam and the release of stored sunlight.

    Planned
  4. 8.4
    The Great Acceleration

    Population, energy and information since 1950.

    Planned
  5. 8.5
    The Anthropocene

    Humans as a geological force.

    Planned

Disciplines