Consilience Chronicle A Big-History Perspective on Ejaz Rahim’s Garden of Secrets Revisited

Abstract

This research analyses Ejaz Rahim’s historiographical epic poem Garden of Secrets Revisited (2020) to explore the synergy between the overarching concept of “Big History” (regarded as good knowledge) and the integrative nature of “Consilience.” Building on the idea of William H. McNeil, David Christian further expostulates the concept of “big history” in his essay “What is Big History?” where he draws on and elaborates the term “consilience” coined by E.O. Wilson, who initially envisioned it as “a return to the goal of a unified understanding of reality.” The in-depth analysis of Rahim’s epic seeks parallels between Christian’s idea of big history by using the consilience of multiple disciplines of knowledge to understand the common themes that shape the world. Marnie Hughes-Warrington’s deliberations on the concept of philosophical and universal history in poetic form, expressed in her book History as Wonder (2019), are triangulated with the ideas of Christian and Jacques Derrida to pursue the argument through a bricolage of theoretical positions. This paper finally develops the thesis that the concept of consilience underpins the methodology of long history by emphasizing an interdisciplinary approach to human history. A critical study of Garden of Secrets Revisited, therefore, provides a nuanced understanding of the ethical implications of the experience of reading big history along with an engagement with Derrida’s propositions in Specters of Marx (1994), where he regards the experience of history as an ethical understanding of things. The study intervenes critical scholarship on the strength of its argument that historiographical poetry as a powerful and transformative sub-genre has the potential to reconnect history, ranging from humanities to natural sciences, with a universalist vision underlying the concept of big history that may help reach the objective historical truth.

Keywords

• big history, consilience, good knowledge, universalism, epic historiography