astrognosy

From astro- (prefix meaning ‘star’) +‎ -gnosy (suffix denoting the scientific knowledge of a subject), modelled on German Astrognosie, or its etymon Late Latin astrognosia,^[1] from Ancient Greek ἄστρον (ástron, “celestial body; (specifically) fixed star; planet”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eHs- (“to burn; to glow”)) + -γνωσία (-gnōsía) (from γνῶσις (gnôsis, “inquiry; knowledge”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- (“to know; to recognize”)).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əˈstɹɒɡnəsi/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /əˈstɹɑɡnəsi/

• Audio (General American):

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• Hyphenation: as‧tro‧gno‧sy

astrognosy (uncountable)

1. (astronomy, archaic) Knowledge of the stars, especially the fixed stars; the branch of astronomy dealing with the fixed stars. [from early 19th c.]
   • c. 1818 (date written), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by George Whalley, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Marginalia II: Camden to Hutton (Bollingen Series; LXXV), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, published 1984, →ISBN, paragraph 43, page 557:

     It is curious at least, that his Philosophy obliged Pythagoras, to make the Solar System ${\displaystyle =10}$, tho' his imperfect Astrognosy reduced him to the shift of including the moon, and imagining an Antiχθων ["anti-earth, anti-world"] and taking the whole as a completory Unit—Sun, Mer[cury,] Ven[us,] Earth, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Antichthon ${\displaystyle =9+}$ Solar Syst[em] ${\displaystyle =1=10}$

     This is the earliest occurrence of the word identified in the Oxford English Dictionary.

   • 1830, “Constellations”, in Francis Lieber, E[dward] Wigglesworth, editors, Encyclopædia Americana. […], volume III, Philadelphia, Pa.: Carey and Lea […], →OCLC, page 464, column 1:

     One of the best works on astrognosy, in the present state of this science, is [Johann Elert] Bode's Anleitung zur Kenntniss des gestirnten Himmels, 9th ed. Berlin, 1823, with plates (Guide to the Knowledge of the Starry Heavens). On the subject of the constellations, and astrognosy of the ancients, the same author has written, in his Ptolemæus, Beobachtung und Beschreibung de Gestirne, Berlin, 1795 (Ptolemy, Observation and Description of the Stars).

   • 1851, Alexander von Humboldt, “Special Results of Observation in the Domain of Cosmical Phenomena”, in E[lise] C[harlotte] Otté, transl., Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. […], volume III, London: Henry G[eorge] Bohn, […], →OCLC, section A (Results of Observations in the Uranological Portion of the Physical Description of the World), page 29:

     The uranological, when opposed to the telluric domain of the Cosmos, may be conveniently separated into two divisions, one of which comprises astrognosy, or the region of the fixed stars, and the other our solar and planetary system.

   • 1889 May 15, [Helena Petrovna Blavatsky], “Our Cycle and the Next”, in H. P. Blavatsky, editor, Lucifer: A Theosophical Magazine, Designed to “Bring to Light the Hidden Things of Darkness”, volume IV, number 21, London: The Theosophical Publishing Company […], →OCLC, page 183:

     Furthermore, it is to the Chaldean astrolatry that modern astrognosy owes its progress, and it is the astronomical calculations of the Magi that became the ground-work of our present mathematical astronomy and have guided discoverers in their researches.

   • 2022, Sonja Neef, “The Southern Cross: The Planetarism of Alexander von Humboldt and François Arago”, in Jason Groves, transl., edited by Martin Neef, The Babylonian Planet: Culture and Encounter under Globalization, paperback edition, London; New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing, published 2023, →ISBN, page 90:

     In this balance sheet, "cosmos" and "universe" are no longer simple oppositions to one another but rather connected to one another through a complex economy of compensation: the form a system or a partnership, perhaps even a kind of "friendship." […] In this system, [Alexander von] Humboldt's Cosmos becomes the figure of a large project that places the astrognosy of the universe in the service of terrestrial responsibilities.

• astrognostic
• astrognostical

• “astrognosy”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.