20 July 2020
Astronomy and more generally the astral sciences have been cultivated, since antiquity, in a wide variety of historical contexts where different types of transmission and interaction have often been established. Thus, research into the development of these sciences represents a vast undertaking that transcends cultures and eras. In order to try to better understand the interactions and influences between the different astronomical traditions, it is therefore necessary to build up a sufficiently large corpus. The texts, tables and diagrams produced by these different scientific cultures have, at least since the eighth century, a common history in Eurasia for the sources found in Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Sanskrit and Chinese corpus. Likewise, tools and methods capable of analysing this great variety of sources must be developed, linking the classical instruments of historiography of recent decades with the most contemporary processes of data mining and artificial intelligence.
The digital humanities are gradually transforming the availability of historical sources, as well as the means of analysing, editing and linking them. These changes need to be addressed, anticipated and encouraged by the different historical research communities. DISHAS (Digital Information System for the History of Astral Sciences) is an international collective undertaking that addresses these changes in the field of astral history.
As a pilot attempt, DISHAS focuses on astronomical tables and, more specifically, their numerical and mathematical content. A first version of the site is available since May 2020. The public interface allows to explore the data in the database according to two main guiding principles:
- A "historical navigation" allows to approach the data through the sources that transmit them, their inscription in time and space.
- An "astronomical navigation" allows you to approach the data through the astronomical phenomena they describe.
The site also offers many other resources for editing and analysing the tables.
This collective work (team) is the result of a collaboration between several international scientific projects: PAL (Germany), HAMSI (New Zealand), and ALFA (SYRTE). In addition to SYRTE, it is supported by PSL, DIM STCN, and ERC ALFA. We have many more ideas for DISHAS and the application should continue to grow with new data and features in the months and years to come!
Matthieu Husson
Contact:matthieu.husson@obspm.fr