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Big History Project
Course: Big History Project > Unit 2
Lesson 3: What Are Disciplines? | 2.2- ACTIVITY: Who Knows What?
- ACTIVITY: DQ Notebook 2.2
- WATCH: Ways of Knowing – Introduction to Cosmology
- WATCH: Ways of Knowing – Introduction to Astrophysics
- READ: Revealing the Dark – Vera Rubin – Graphic Biography
- ACTIVITY: What Do You Know? What Do You Ask?
- Quiz: What Are Disciplines?
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ACTIVITY: Who Knows What?
Purpose
In this activity, you’ll start to explore how examining the same event from different perspectives can result in drawing varied conclusions surrounding that event. There is another activity at the end of this lesson that is an extension of this activity. Both of these activities should help you better understand what it means to use interdisciplinary perspectives and how you can use a variety of disciplines to help you understand the Big History story.
Process
Think about the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. Vesuvius is known for this eruption, which led to the burying and destruction of the Roman cities Pompeii and Hurculaneum.
Think about answers to the following questions:
1. What are the questions a historian would ask about what happened?
2. What kind of questions would a biologist (or another discipline of your choosing) ask about what happened?
For Further Discussion
Now, share one of your historian/biologist/other discipline questions in the Questions Area below. Then, look at someone’s question from a different discipline. What happens to the story if you put your question and the other person’s question together? Comment, in response to someone else’s disciplinary question, what you think happens to stories that are told from more than one perspective.
Want to join the conversation?
A biologist might ask, "What creatures were living in this area before the disaster?" They could answer those questions with data from paleontologists studying the fossilized remains of the creatures who once lived there.(14 votes)
They might also ask how many animals survived and what animals were those.(4 votes)
- A historian might ask how long did it take to rebuild the city?(6 votes)
Or an architect/real estate developer.
Or a janitor might ask, "How long will it take to clean this city for rebuilding?"(2 votes)
Did the eruption affect the soil and arability of the land in the succeeding generations ? If so, when were people able to return to the area ?(5 votes)- In Pompeii, the most famous city affected, nobody lived there after the explosion.(5 votes)
A biologist would ask " What was the impact of this eruption on the nature?"
A historian would ask " Where did the survivors go and how they survived?"
A sociologist would ask " What sorts of events would cause the survivors to start a new life?"
A psychologist would ask "Were the survivors ever been able to have any peace out of this trauma?"
A geologist would ask "Why did that the eruption occurred and is there any specific time period?"(7 votes)- I think a historian would ask what happened to the people impacted by the eruption, how their society changed, and what would come next. I think an archaeologist would ask who was buried there and what the fossils and other buried artifacts were.(6 votes)
An anthropoligist might ask about the impact of the eruption on different classes of society - i.e. freemen vs. slaves?(3 votes)
An artist may question what kinds of sculptures, paintings, and various works of art were lost forever in the explosion. It's always sad when a people's culture and creative minds are wasted away, whether it's due to natural causes (earthquakes, fires, hurricanes) or other people (the burning of libraries, Hitler during WWII). I find it very troubling that these things will never be recovered.(3 votes)
Why isn't the burying of Hurculaneum as well known as the burying of Pompeii?(3 votes)- For the question, ¨what would a biologist ask¨, I said how did this affect the ecosystem around the volcano?(2 votes)
A historian would ask when it happened and what the outcome was, like if a certain tribe of people were wiped out or, when, say in 79 CE.
A biologist would probably ask what it did that changed the environment or which habitats for animals, or humans, were destroyed.(2 votes)