Summary

Chapter Twelve, “The Point of Science: Lessons from the Mauna,” talks about Prescod-Weinstein’s experiences learning, unlearning, and relearning the history of science. It starts with a trip she took to an observatory in Chile, where she was fascinated to tour massive telescopes, seeing parts of the night sky she’d never seen before, but did not question it when she was told there are no indigenous people left in Chile. She then tells the reader about a job opportunity she rejected, working as a technician at an observatory Native Hawaiians protested the construction of. She says that the (mainly white) astrologists who dismissed this as a conflict between science and religion were actually acting unscientifically themselves, refusing to question their own beliefs and examine their own history. She talks about how astronomy repeats the history of colonialism...