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Cultural Astronomy: A scientific frame to understand academic astronomy as part of the Social World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2021

Alejandro M. López Open the ORCID record for Alejandro M. López [Opens in a new window]
Alejandro M. López*
Affiliation:
SIAC president, CONICET-UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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In the past, Western academic astronomy has conceived in a very specific way its interests. However, in recent decades there has been a promising openness to the rest of the society, in the context of areas such as education, heritage and outreach. Despite this, there has not been an adequate scientific approach to do it, which would imply taking into account the social sciences and a truly interdisciplinary perspective. Here we want to develop the idea that this interdisciplinary approach already exists and it is called: Cultural Astronomy. Unfortunately, in the context of academic astronomy it has been only seen as a study of the “astronomies of others”, intended as previous stages or failed attempts of Western academic astronomy. We will seek to show that Cultural Astronomy, as a critical reflection on the social character of the astronomical knowledge, is key to the success of these opening efforts.

Keywords

Cultural AstronomyInterdisciplineEducationHeritageDevelopmentOutreach
Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 15 , Symposium S367: Education and Heritage in the Era of Big Data in Astronomy , December 2019 , pp. 235 - 244
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Astronomical Union

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