Cliodynamics

“Big History” and “meta-history” are grounded in an ancient lamentation over the segmentation of human existence, the alienation from an original sense of oneness. In this paper I am doing my disciplinary duty by providing a deflating historical counterweight to the desire to overcome those last remaining obstacles on the path to a complete account. For me at least, the difficulties in reaching a complete account in a common language remain; nor am I persuaded that the difficulties are merely technical. The difficulties are deeply engrained not just in modern disciplinary thought but in cognition as such. Indeed, the very goal of a complete account in a common language seems to me to be based on a false view of disciplinary distinctions as well as a false understanding of what we ought to wish for, our real interests.