“Complexity is not just a feature of evolution; it's a product of the rules of emergence that govern the universe.”
—Neil deGrasse Tyson
Big history started with the
Alpha Point, be it the Big Bang or Big Bounce, and resembles a huge ongoing
evolutionary computing program running on the universal computer of
sorts. As a rule, which I refer to as ‘Universal Evolutionary
Doubling Algorithm,’ or simply ‘Exponential Evolution,’ the
pace of any evolutionary process always quickens It took billions of years
since the Big Bang for Earth to form. It took two billion more for unicellular
life to “warm up” for the next phase of multicellularity about 550 million
years ago. Mammals inherited Earth some 65 million years ago. With the
emergence of primates, evolutionary progress was measured in mere millions of
years, leading to Homo sapiens some 300,000 years ago.