Professor
Roslynn Haynes
University of NSW
Thursday, 23
August 2001, 8:00 P.M.
Physics
building, Theatre 1
University
of Tasmania, Sandy Bay
Indigenous Australians had some of the best conditions in the world for naked-eye astronomy of the southern hemisphere and they made very accurate observations of the stars and constellations. But the reasons why they did so and the purposes for which they used their observations were very different from the reasons why western scientists do astronomy.
This talk outlines what the Aboriginal people observed and what they did with their knowledge, and suggests how this may make us think about the assumptions of western science.
Raoslynn Haynes is Associate Professor of English at the University of New South Wales. She did her first degree in Biochemistry at the University of Sydney before changing to Humanities. After an M.A. in English at the University of Tasmania she completed a Ph. D. at the University of Leicester with a thesis on the influence of science on the thought of H. G. Wells. During her time at UNSW she has been particularly interested in the interface between science and the humanities. She has recently moved to Tasmania. Her published books include:
H.
G. Wells: Discoverer of the Future
High
Tech: High Co$t?: Technology, Society and the Environment
From
Faust to Strangelove: Representations of Scientists in Western Literature
Discoverers
of the Southern Sky: A History of Australian Astronomy (co-author with her
radiophysicst husband Dr Raymond Haynes)
Seeking
the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, art and Film.
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