Sapiens Scientia · Structure of Time
Follow the emergence of matter, life, and civilization. Select a moment to explore its place in deep time and the systems it connects.
Select an entry to explore its connections.
22 entries shown.
Selected moment · Sapiens
13.8 Gyr
Since the Big Bang
You are here. Computing and global networks bind humanity into a single information system — the present moment this project maps from.
Choose another moment to change perspective.
Selected moment · Sapiens
13.8 Gyr
Since the Big Bang
You are here. Computing and global networks bind humanity into a single information system — the present moment this project maps from.
Choose another moment to change perspective.
Labels show elapsed time since the Big Bang. Rail length uses logarithmic age before the present, stretching recent history.
Each eon switches on a new layer of the system. The cosmos forges matter and a planet; the living Earth fills with cells and bodies; animals evolve minds; and a single species turns knowledge into a method. The same platforms that study the ladder of scale also have a place on the arc of time.
Eon I
Year 0 to 9.3 billion years
The origin scale of time. Matter, the elements, the first stars, and finally a planet condense out of an expanding universe. Everything later on the arc is assembled from atoms forged here.
First light
A world forms
Eon II
10.1 to 13.2 billion years
The biogenic scale. Life begins, learns to breathe sunlight, invents the complex cell, and finally assembles itself into many-celled bodies. Earth becomes a planet that its own life has remade.
Single cells
Bodies
Eon III
13.3 to 13.8 billion years
The animal scale. Nervous systems, skeletons, vertebrates, and warm-blooded mammals; mass extinctions clear the stage and the first upright apes step onto it. The lineage that becomes human takes shape here.
Animal life
Turning points
Eon IV
13.8 billion years to now
The human scale of time. A single species learns language, farms, writes, reasons systematically, industrializes, and connects itself into a planetary information system. The whole of recorded history is the thin bright tail of the arc.
Becoming human
Civilization
The Ladder of Scale and the Arc of Time are two readings of the same structure. A thing's place in the hierarchy of scale is also a moment in the history of the universe — a cell is both ten microns wide and 3.7 billion years deep. Sapiens Scientia studies the world along both axes at once.Climb the Ladder of Scale