Astronomy’s Integrating Impact on Culture: A Ladrièrean Hypothesis

The author summarizes the framework that Jean Ladrière has proposed for describing and understanding the impact that science and technology have on cultures and employs this framework to characterize the cultural influence of astronomy and cosmology. The author hypothesizes that astronomy and cosmology are similar to other areas of science and technology in their contribution to cultural and social evolution and change at the level of destructuration. However, at the level of positive restructuration, they play a unique integrative role in a number of ways—by restoring a more open-ended and uncontrollable sense of the future and of temporality, by acting as an invitation to self-transcendence and by disclosing new horizons and limits.