Name: Astronomy Across Cultures
ISBN: 9789401058209

Astronomy Across Cultures

Astronomy Across Cultures: A History of Non-Western Astronomy consists of essays dealing with the astronomical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Polynesian, Egyptian and Tibetan astronomy, among others, the book includes essays on Sky Tales and Why We Tell Them and Astronomy and Prehistory, and Astronomy and Astrology. The essays address the connections between science and culture and relate astronomical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.

What Hacker News says

antogniniMar 2022

I do reference ancient Jewish astronomy a couple of times in the episodes on the Babylonians. Since they were both Mesopotamian societies they had many cultural similarities that extended to their astronomy. (E.g., they both marked new months when the crescent moon was first visible after the new moon.)

But I would like to devote at least a full episode on Jewish astronomy, both ancient and medieval. There's a nice chapter by Tzvi Langermann in Astronomy Across Cultures on the subject. My plan is to briefly cover the Romans after finishing with the Greeks, and then turn to the astronomy of cultures that fall outside the "main thread" of Western astronomy (e.g., paleolithic European, Chinese, Indian, Mesoamerican, Subsaharan African, etc.). Then the plan is to turn to medieval astronomy in the West, starting with the astronomy of Islamic civilization and moving on to the astronomy of Western Europe.

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dorchadasJun 2021

I've got a book you might like then. I recently discovered there was an 'Astronomy Across Cultures' book, as ethnoastronomy is something I've been interested in for a while (It's always neat to see how other people interact and describe the stars and sky. Shame a lot of this info is being lost as languages die and peoples assimilate). The book focuses on non-Western methods of astronomy, and is part of a series titled 'Science Across Cultures'.

Full reference is: Astronomy Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Astronomy ed. Helaine Selin and Sun Xiaochun (ISBN: 978-94-010-5820-9, DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-4179-6)

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