Phenomena or Signs

LÓPEZ, ALEJANDRO MARTÍN

Viena

Congreso; Historical Instruments Science Meeting and Other Recent History of Astronomy Research, C3 History of Astronomy Meetings, XXX General Assembly International Astronomical Union; 2018

International Astronomical Union

Western academic astronomy, starting from a worldview that supposes the separation between nature / culture / super-nature, understands the events of the celestial space as "astronomical phenomena". This leads Western science to think in terms of laws and "physical interactions". When from the ethnoastronomy we approach the conceptions of the sky of other cultures we implicitly project this conception. In this presentation, based on previous works, we seek to show how this becomes a source of incorrect understandings when the root metaphors of the cultures in question are very far from those of Western science. To do so, we will deal with the case of the Guaycurú Chaco aboriginal groups, whose basic ideas about the cosmos are modeled by the social relations between diverse intentional beings, fundamentally modeled by power. In this context, self-interest in the sky has different motivations, methods and budgets than Western science. These are oriented to establish courses of action in relation to the intentions of the celestial beings, using for it the clues or signs that can be observed in the sky.