Third Blog - June 2013
With Summer just around the corner I wonder how well Mr. Tony Hall is settling in to his new job as the BBC Director General. He has a little work to do to bring the BBC back from the edge and I do hope that he can do it. The BBC is a high pedigree organisation with its own history of achievement. With some of the best programmes the world has seen.
On a personal level I would love to see the BBC have a go at Big History, or failing that a go at Long History. They have the tools and presenters to do it with.
Imagine Brian Cox, Jim Al-Khalili and the Sky At Night team doing the Big Bang up to the creation of the Solar System. Also, Sir David Attenborough, Iain Stewart and Alice Roberts on Earth Science and Natural History. Plus there is a whole raft of historians at the BBCs disposal for the history of humanity - Andrew Marr has even attempted it lock, stock and barrel.
The BBC would be back at the top of the science and history tree with such a back catalogue already. All it needs is someone to sit down, maybe update the archives and prepare something for release. Just a thought.
Anyway, I digress. Big History Leeds now has a Facebook page and Twitter, YouTube and MySpace accounts should you wish to take a look at, like and follow.
The links are here:-
Facebook - http://m.facebook.com/BigHistoryLeeds?
MySpace - https://myspace.com/bighistoryleeds
I have been piecing together a framework from the Augustinian Era to the end of the human race / world / universe, and what comes after, scenarios. The Augustinian Era refers to the period in Pre Big Bang history which Einstein described the point where his theory of relativity etc breaks down. When there is no known time / motion / etc. An idea first mentioned by St. Augustine and later picked up by Einstein. The idea is to have a discussion concerning things like multiverses etc and somehow square the Big History circle between human / earth / universe death and the point of the origins of our universe - the starting point as we know it in Big History.
I see this venture as being part of the whole Big History experience. We would be pointing people in the direction of websites / Facebook / Twitter / books / CDs / downloads etc which The Big History Project people are producing. Also at certain points in the Big History story we can take it out to the many suburbs and restart the "course" there. This way we can keep everything ongoing. There should be no age restrictions.
The basic plan for each Big History Leeds lecture would be this:-
i) Lectures/discussions/field trips of Big History in chronological order.
ii) As we cover each section and move on, if something new happens we can have a short catchup lecture before the main lecture begins.
iii) Finally, a question and answer section to finish the evening with.
Finally, I will be looking at various avenues to see where I stand as regards to funding, in order to get this off the ground. As always I would be interested in their thoughts anyway...
Have fun and enjoy the summer...
Chris Oddy
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