Dust & Equations

This is a summary of what I’ve learned over six years of self-study. It tries to answer one question – How did we get here?

The work is divided into three parts.

Part One: World History

This covers the journey of humans from the Paleolithic Era to modern times. It explains the Neolithic Revolution, the first civilizations, and major turning points like the Axial Age, the Silk Road, the Mongol Empire, the Columbian Exchange, the Gunpowder Empires, the Industrial and French Revolutions, the Berlin Conference, the World Wars, and Decolonization. It also tells the separate stories of European, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese history.

Part Two: Thought History

This traces how humans learned to think about the world. It covers economic thought (from Adam Smith to Keynes), psychological thought (from Freud to cognitive science), cosmological thought (from Aristotle to dark energy), physical thought (from Newton to quantum mechanics), mathematical thought (from Babylon to AI), and computer thought (from algorithms to machine learning).

Part Three: Philosophical History

This follows Western philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the present – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, existentialism, utilitarianism, analytic philosophy, postmodernism, and the questions AI is raising today.

Each chapter stands alone. You can start anywhere.

This is not academic work. I am a 21-year-old college dropout (as of 2026), not a professional historian or philosopher. I have tried to be accurate, but I may be wrong in places. Read it as a starting point, not a final word.