US-Africa Planning Visit: Collaborations in Cultural Astronomy

美非计划访问：文化天文学合作

• 批准号: 0438245
• 负责人: Jarita Holbrook
• 金额: $ 0.96万
• 依托单位: National Society of Black Physicists
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-01 至 2005-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0438245&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: US; Africa; Planning; Visit; Collaborations

Holbrook 0438245This award supports planning activities to develop an international collaboration that investigates the linkages between Islamic astronomy and West African indigenous astronomy. Because Islamic astronomy preserved and improved ancient astronomy and has a clear history of diffusion into Europe during the Middle Ages, it is recognized as having contributed to advances in astronomy during the European Renaissance. Muslim traders began working in West Africa by the tenth century, settled into communities as the merchant class, and came into contact with indigenous culture and beliefs. The U.S. researchers (Drs. Holbrook and Brown) will collaborate with Dr. Urama Johnson of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Dr. Thebe Medupe from the South African Astronomical Observatory and North West University, South Africa, to study indigenous African astronomy in search of evidence of adoptions from Islamic astronomy. The team will examine studies of West African cultures and their cultural astronomy and will develop a lexicon of items from Islamic astronomy to search for within West African cultural astronomy. They will identify Arabic words among indigenous astronomy terms and identify uniquely Islamic astronomy concepts that may have diffused to the local population. The lexicon is expected to be different from that used for Europe because most West African cultures did not use formal writing systems unless they adopted Arabic script. The preliminary study will target the Hausa of Nigeria, who have adopted part of the Islamic calendar, and scientific documents written in Arabic that have been found in Mali. This planning visit is intended to strengthen international collaborations between U.S. and African researchers. The project team is gender diverse, and includes both African and African American researchers, as well as junior faculty. The team plans to include university students from Africa and North America in their research efforts. The collaborators will incorporate their research results into lessons for physics, astronomy, and social science classes and for K-12 outreach groups. The findings of the planned project will be published both in academic journals as well as in popular magazines geared toward advancing the understanding of science. This award is cofunded by the Office of International Science and Engineering and the Science and Technology Studies Program in the Division of Social and Economic Sciences.

霍尔布鲁克0438245该奖项支持规划活动，以发展一个国际合作，调查伊斯兰天文学和西非土著天文学之间的联系。由于伊斯兰天文学保存和改进了古代天文学，并在中世纪传播到欧洲，因此被认为对欧洲文艺复兴时期的天文学进步做出了贡献。穆斯林商人在世纪开始在西非工作，作为商人阶级定居在社区，并接触到土著文化和信仰。美国研究人员（霍尔布鲁克博士和布朗博士）将与尼日利亚大学恩苏卡分校的乌拉马约翰逊博士和南非天文台和南非西北大学的Thebe Medupe博士合作，研究非洲土著天文学，寻找从伊斯兰天文学中收养的证据。该小组将审查西非文化及其文化天文学的研究，并将编制一份伊斯兰天文学项目词汇，以便在西非文化天文学范围内进行搜索。他们将确定土著天文学术语中的阿拉伯语单词，并确定可能已经传播到当地人口的独特的伊斯兰天文学概念。预计该词汇将与欧洲使用的词汇不同，因为大多数西非文化不使用正式的书写系统，除非他们采用阿拉伯文字。初步研究将针对尼日利亚的豪萨人，他们采用了部分伊斯兰历法，以及在马里发现的阿拉伯文科学文件。这次计划访问旨在加强美国和非洲研究人员之间的国际合作。该项目小组是性别多样的，包括非洲和非裔美国人的研究人员，以及初级教师。该团队计划将来自非洲和北美的大学生纳入他们的研究工作。合作者将把他们的研究成果纳入物理学，天文学和社会科学课程以及K-12外展小组的课程中。该计划项目的研究结果将在学术期刊和旨在促进科学理解的流行杂志上发表。该奖项由国际科学和工程办公室以及社会和经济科学部的科学和技术研究计划共同资助。