ABSTRACT
Since you’ve found your way to this chapter, you already have an idea of what big history is. You might be taking a course in it right now, or teaching one, or perhaps you’re doing some research on some aspect of big history. A few of you will be full-blown practitioners. In all cases you have decided that you want to learn about, or reflect upon, or perhaps argue about the relationship between big history and theory, which is commendable: most students of history shy away from theory. Indeed, maybe you are reading this under duress. It would be much more fun to get down to the business of doing the real stuff instead of wasting time on what seems more like philosophy than history.
