The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History

John Robert McNeill considers the second law of thermodynamics within the history of the universe, life, and humanity. Like the history of the universe and life, human history involves the creation of complex structures over time that ever-increasing energy requirements and flows maintain. Human history, however, is distinct in that its complex structures destroy simpler ones and absorb their components. Today, human society constitutes one big web of cooperation and competition sustained through large-scale flows of information and energy. J. R. McNeill questions how the web and its flows will last, given issues that arise with the limitless capacity for information and the consequences of massive energy use. Additionally, social inequalities and humans’ capacity for self-destruction bring survival of the web into question.

William H. McNeill posits that expansion of human life via increasing consumption and control of energy is the most significant effect of the human web. While human history is distinct, it adheres to larger evolutionary patterns, as evident in parallels between the behavior of bacteria and the behavior of human societies. In addition, the human web resembles the biosphere in its “complex patterns of cooperation and conflict” (325) as well as its quality of being one despite constant change, complexity, and specialization of its parts.