Conclusion

Abstract

From the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, astronomy propelled scientific exploration. The voyages undertaken to establish the transit of Venus, map the southern constellations, and establish trade routes across Africa also provided the operating metaphors of discovery and demystification that expedited those journeys and propagated colonization in Africa. The demystification of the nature of the night sky led nineteenth-century peoples to the uncomfortable knowledge that their world, their universe even, was vast, non-Biblical, and dying. This transience of nature forced humanity to confront the transience of the human species in general and the individual life in particular. Psychological dissonance permeates the resulting literature.