David Christian: Big history

URL:http://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history.html

First, a video. (Video) Yes, it is a scrambled egg. But as you look at it, I hope you'll begin to feel just slightly uneasy. Because you may notice that what's actually happening is that the egg is unscrambling itself. And you'll now see the yolk and the white have separated. And now they're going to be poured back into the egg. And we all know in our heart of hearts that this is not the way the universe works. A scrambled egg is mush – tasty mush – but it's mush. An egg is a beautiful, sophisticated thing that can create even more sophisticated things, such as chickens. And we know in our heart of hearts that the universe does not travel from mush to complexity. In fact, this gut instinct is reflected in one of the most fundamental laws of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, orthe law of entropy. What that says basically is that the general tendency of the universe is to move from order and structure to lack of order, lack of structure – in fact, to mush.

Взбалтывать, разбивать; желток; кашица; белок; чутье.

So here's a great puzzle: in a universe ruled by the second law of thermodynamics, how is it possible to generate the sort of complexity I've described, the sort of complexity represented by you and me and the convention center? Well, the answer seems to be, the universe can create complexity, but with great difficulty. In pockets, there appear what my colleague, Fred Spier, calls «Goldilocks conditions» – not too hot, not too cold, just right for the creation of complexity. And slightly more complex things appear. And where you have slightly more complex things, you can get slightly more complex things. And in this way, complexity builds stage by stage. Each stage is magical because it creates the impression of something utterly new appearing almost out of nowhere in the universe. We refer in big history to these moments as threshold moments. And at each threshold, the going gets tougher. The complex things get more fragile, more vulnerable; the Goldilocks conditions get more stringent, and it's more difficult to create complexity.

Совершенно; пороговый; уязвимый; строгий, обязательный.

Around us, there's nothing. There's not even time or space. Imagine the darkest, emptiest thing you can and cube it a gazillion times and that's where we are. And then suddenly, bang! A universe appears, an entire universe. And we've crossed our first threshold. The universe is tiny; it's smaller than an atom. It's incredibly hot. It contains everything that's in today's universe, so you can imagine, it's busting. And it's expanding at incredible speed. And at first, it's just a blur, but very quickly distinct things begin to appear in that blur. Within the first second, energy itself shatters into distinct forces including electromagnetism and gravity. And energy does something else quite magical: it congeals to form matter – quarks that will create protons and leptons that include electrons. And all of that happens in the first second.

Несметное количество; невероятно; разрушаться; пятно; пошатнуться, расстроиться; сгущать, замораживать.

Now we move forward 380,000 years. That's twice as long as humans have been on this planet. And now simple atoms appear of hydrogen and helium. Now I want to pause for a moment, 380,000 years after the origins of the universe, because we actually know quite a lot about the universe at this stage. We know above all that it was extremely simple. It consisted of huge clouds of hydrogen and helium atoms, and they have no structure. They're really a sort of cosmic mush.

And this is how it works. Gravity is more powerful where there's more stuff. So where you get slightly denser areas, gravity starts compacting clouds of hydrogen and helium atoms. So we can imagine the early universe breaking up into a billion clouds. And each cloud is compacted, gravity gets more powerful as density increases, the temperature begins to rise at the center of each cloud, and then, at the center of each cloud, the temperature crosses the threshold temperature of 10 million degrees, protons start to fuse, there's a huge release of energy, and, bam!

Плотность.

Stars will create the Goldilocks conditions for crossing two new thresholds. When very large stars die, they create temperatures so high that protons begin to fuse in all sorts of exotic combinations, to form all the elements of the periodic table. If, like me, you're wearing a gold ring, it was forged in a supernova explosion. So now the universe is chemically more complex. And in a chemically more complex universe, it's possible to make more things. And what starts happening is that, around young suns, young stars, all these elements combine, they swirl around, the energy of the star stirs them around, they form particles, they form snowflakes, they form little dust motes, they form rocks, they form asteroids, and eventually, they form planets and moons. And that is how our solar system was formed, four and a half billion years ago. Rocky planets like our Earth are significantly more complex than stars because they contain a much greater diversity of materials. So we've crossed a fourth threshold of complexity.

Изобретать, придумывать;

Создавать; кружить; пылинка, соринка.

Now, the going gets tougher. The next stage introduces entities that are significantly more fragile, significantly more vulnerable, but they're also much more creative and much more capable of generating further complexity. I'm talking, of course, aboutliving organisms. Living organisms are created by chemistry. We are huge packages of chemicals. So, chemistry is dominated by the electromagnetic force. That operates over smaller scales than gravity, which explains why you and I are smaller than stars or planets. Now, what are the ideal conditions for chemistry? What are the Goldilocks conditions? Well, first, you need energy, but not too much. In the center of a star, there's so much energy that any atoms that combine will just get busted apart again. But not too little. In intergalactic space, there's so little energy that atoms can't combine. What you want is just the right amount,

You also need a great diversity of chemical elements, and you need liquid such as water. Why? Well, in gasses, atoms move past each other so fast that they can't hitch up. In solids, atoms are stuck together, they can't move. In liquids, they can cruise and cuddle and link up to form molecules. Now, where do you find such Goldilocks conditions? Well, planets are great, and our early Earth was almost perfect. It was just the right distance from its star to contain huge oceans of open water. And deep beneath those oceans, at cracks in the Earth's crust, you've got heat seeping up from inside the Earth, and you've got a great diversity of elements. So at those deep oceanic vents, fantastic chemistry began to happen, and atoms combined in all sorts of exotic combinations.

Обниматься, клапан.

But of course, life is more than just exotic chemistry. How do you stabilize those huge molecules that seem to be viable? Well, it's here that life introduces an entirely new trick. You don't stabilize the individual; you stabilize the template, the thing that carries information, and you allow the template to copy itself. And DNA, of course, is the beautiful molecule that contains that information. You'll be familiar with the double helix of DNA. Each rung contains information. So, DNA contains information about how to make living organisms. And DNA also copies itself. So, it copies itself and scatters the templates through the ocean. So the information spreads. Notice that information has become part of our story. The real beauty of DNA though is in its imperfections. As it copies itself, once in every billion rungs, there tends to be an error. And what that means is that DNA is, in effect, learning. It's accumulating new ways of making living organisms because some of those errors work. So DNA's learning and it's building greater diversity and greater complexity. And we can see this happening over the last four billion years.

Жизнеспособный; матрица, шаблон; разбрасывать.

For most of that time of life on Earth, living organisms have been relatively simple – single cells. But they had great diversity, and, inside, great complexity. Then from about 600 to 800 million years ago, multi-celled organisms appear. You get fungi, you get fish, you get plants, you get amphibia, you get reptiles, and then, of course, you get the dinosaurs. And occasionally, there are disasters. Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid landed on Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula, creating conditions equivalent to those of a nuclear war, and the dinosaurs were wiped out. Terrible news for the dinosaurs, but great news for our mammalian ancestors, who flourished in the niches left empty by the dinosaurs. And we human beings are part of that creative evolutionary pulse that began 65 million years ago with the landing of an asteroid.

Грибки; процветать.

Humans appeared about 200,000 years ago. And I believe we count as a threshold in this great story. Let me explain why. We've seen that DNA learns in a sense, it accumulates information. But it is so slow. DNA accumulates information through random errors, some of which just happen to work. But DNA had actually generated a faster way of learning: it had produced organisms with brains, and those organisms can learn in real time. They accumulate information, they learn. The sad thing is, when they die, the information dies with them. Now what makes humans different is human language. We are blessed with a language, a system of communication, so powerful and so precise that we can share what we've learned with such precision that it can accumulate in the collective memory. And that means it can outlast the individuals who learned that information, and it can accumulate from generation to generation.

Пережить.

I call this ability collective learning. It's what makes us different. We can see it at work in the earliest stages of human history. We evolved as a species in the savanna lands of Africa, but then you see humans migrating into new environments, into desert lands, into jungles, into the ice age tundra of Siberia – tough, tough environment – into the Americas, into Australasia.

Then 10,000 years ago, exploiting a sudden change in global climate with the end of the last ice age, humans learned to farm. Farming was an energy bonanza. And exploiting that energy, human populations multiplied. Human societies got larger, denser, more interconnected. And then from about 500 years ago, humans began to link up globally through shipping, through trains, through telegraph, through the Internet, until now we seem to form a single global brainof almost seven billion individuals. And that brain is learning at warp speed. And in the last 200 years, something else has happened. We've stumbled on another energy bonanza in fossil fuels. So fossil fuels and collective learning together explain the staggering complexity we see around us.

Деформировать, искривлять; натолкнуться; золотое дно.

Collective learning is a very, very powerful force, and it's not clear that we humans are in charge of it. I remember very vividly as a child growing up in England, living through the Cuban Missile Crisis. For a few days, the entire biosphere seemed to be on the verge of destruction. And the same weapons are still here, and they are still armed. If we avoid that trap, others are waiting for us. We're burning fossil fuels at such a rate that we seem to be undermining the Goldilocks conditions that made it possible for human civilizations to flourish over the last 10,000 years.

Ловушка; подрывать, расшатывать.

Ø Ex. 1. Answer the following questions:

1. What is entropy?

2. What is the general trend of development in the Universe – from chaos to order or from order to chaos?

3. What is meant by Goldilocks conditions?

4. How does complexity build up?

5. Why does the lecturer call each stage in the development of the Universe magical?

6. How can we define the so called threshold moments?

7. What do we have to do before studying the process of complexity development?

8. What could we see around us if we went 13 billion years back in time?

9. What was the ‘whether’ like?

10. How fast did things appear?

11. How can you define the blur of the environment?

12. What exactly happened on the first second in the history of Time?

13. How did matter appear? What was it made of? How did stars appear?

14. What was the role of energy in forming matter?

15. What did the cosmic mush consist of? What were the first chemical elements?

16. At what stage did living organisms appear? What kind of conditions are necessary for them to appear?

17. What made our planet so suitable for becoming inhabitable?

18. What kind of template was chosen for preserving information?

19. What is the real beauty of the DNA? Why?

20. What kind of multi-celled organisms appear?

21. How exactly does DNA accumulate information?

22. What kind of gift are people blessed with?

23. What opportunities did migration offer people in terms of development?

24. Why was farming so crucial in the evolution of men?

25. What is single global brain?

26. Why do fossil fuels and collective learning explain the staggering complexity around us?

27. How do people undermine Goldilocks conditions?

28. What kind of traps should we avoid?

Ex. 2. Translate the sentences from Russian into English:

1. В глубине души мы знаем, что Вселенная не проходит в своем развитии путь от простого к сложному.

2. Каждый этап развития Вселенной можно назвать чудом, так как сложность нового порядка появляется как бы из ниоткуда.

3. Более сложные явления в процесса развития становятся все более хрупкими и уязвимыми.

4. С каждым новым порогом развития усложняется сам процесс созидания нового.

5. Вселенная расширяется с невероятной скоростью и из бесформенного пятна вырисовываются четко различимые предметы.

6. По мере возрастания плотности увеличивается сила гравитации.

7. Как можно зафиксировать жизнеспособные молекулы? Ответ прост – стабилизируются не сами молекулы, а матрица, несущая информацию о них.

8. ДНК копирует себя и распространяет подобные себе структуры повсюду через океан.

9. Что интересно, ДНК учится на своих собственных ошибках! Именно это делает ее способной к развитию, так как некоторые ошибки срабатывают на пользу эволюции.

10. Время от времени происходят катастрофы. Одна из них унесла навсегда динозавров.

11. Способность обучаться коллективно и извлекать из этого пользу делает нас принципиально иными существами.

12. Как вид мы эволюционировали на просторах саванны, но мигрируя в более суровые климатические зоны, мы учились жить в суровых условиях и решать новые задачи.

Ex. 3. Make up a plan to the text. State your opinion on the aspects of the issue. Use the parentheses given below:

1. Broadly speaking	1. В общих чертах	11. Oddly	11.Странно; забавно
2. In essence.	2. По сути	12. Admittedly	12. По общему признанию; предположительно
3. Interestingly	3. Что интересно	13. Remarkably	13. Удивительно; замечательно; необыкновенно
4. Conceivably	4. Предположительно	14. In a way	14. В каком-то смысле; отчасти
5. Apparently	5. По-видимому	15. At a rough guess	15. По приблизительным подсчетам; предположительно
6. Presumably	6. Предположительно, вероятно	16. Predictably	16. Вполне предсказуемо
7. Ostensibly	7. Якобы, как будто бы, по видимости, для видимости	17. Seemingly	17. С виду
8. To all intents and purposes	8. Фактически; по существу; во всех отношениях	18. To my mind	18. По-моему
9. Incredibly	9. Невероятно	19. On balance	19. В итоге
10. Understandably	10. По понятным причинам	20. Ultimately	20. В конечном счете; в конце концов; в итоге