Peter J. Richerson

Craig Benjamin

Leonid E. Grinin

Andrey V. Korotayev

Ken Baskin

Stephen I. Ternyik

Olga A. Sorokina

Rendt Gorter

Ken Gilbert

Antonio Gelis-Filho

Anton L. Grinin

David Hookes

Antony Harper

Joe Brewer

The present volume is the fifth issue of the ‘Evolution’ Yearbook series. Our Yearbooks are designed to present to its readers the widest possible spectrum of subjects and issues: from universal evolutionism to the analysis of particular evolutionary regularities in the development of biological, abiotic, and social systems, culture, cognition, language, etc. The main objective of our Yearbook is the creation of a unified interdisciplinary field of research, within which scientists specializing in different disciplines could work within the framework of unified or similar paradigms, using common terminology and searching for common rules, tendencies and regularities. Global evolution (in connection with the Big History) becomes the main subject of our Yearbook. We strive to arrange each issue in such a way that the line from cosmic evolution to the human future is evident. What is the subject of the present issue of the Yearbook? Similar to the previous issues, it shows some aspects of the evolutionary advance from the earlier phases to the anticipated future of human society. But on the whole, this volume is devoted to different aspects and facts of megaevolution and some universal theories in an attempt to find common ground in the diversity of manifestation of evolution and its forms at different stages of development. So the title of this issue, ‘Evolution and Big History: Dimensions, Trends, and Forecasts’, is fully justified (besides, several papers contribute to the field of Big History). The volume consists of four sections: Dimensions, Trends, and Aspects; Big History's Manifestations; Trends and Forecasts; and Reviews and Information. This Yearbook will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Cosmology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Economics and other areas of study. More than that, this edition will challenge and excite your vision of your own life and the new discoveries going on around us.

Evolution and Big History: Dimensions, Trends, and Forecasts

EVOLUTION

Ken Gilbert

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