Indigenous Astronomies and Progress in Modern Astronomy
Clive Ruggles

TL;DR
This paper advocates for mutual understanding and respect between modern astronomy and indigenous cosmologies, emphasizing the benefits of cultural awareness for scientific progress and natural heritage preservation.
Contribution
It highlights the importance of recognizing indigenous cosmologies in modern astronomy to foster respect, reduce resistance, and enhance scientific and cultural understanding.
Findings
Mutual awareness benefits scientific progress.
Understanding indigenous cosmologies fosters respect and reduces resistance.
Shared attitudes towards dark skies promote heritage preservation.
Abstract
From an anthropological point of view, the whole concept of a "path of progress" in astronomical discovery is anathema, since it implicitly downgrades other cultural perspectives, such as the many "indigenous cosmologies" that still exist in the modern world. By doing so, one risks provoking those who hold them and-as is most obvious in places such as Hawaii where the two "world-views" come into direct contact-reating avoidable resistance to that very progress. The problem is complicated by the existence of "fringe" and "new-age" views that are increasingly confused with, and even passed off as, indigenous perceptions. In a modern world where widespread public perceptions include many that are unscientific in the broadest sense of the term, I shall argue that there are actually a range of positive benefits for progress in scientific astronomy to be derived from the mutual awareness and…
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