Astronomical interests prompted a series of entries by European travellers into the Pacific. In studies of the complex motives and effects of these expeditions, it has been common to treat astronomical interests either as rationales for more profound political and economic enterprise, or as of a strictly utilitarian character. Simon Schaffer, professor in the history of science at the University of Cambridge, looks at the cosmologies on which certain forms of European astronomy depended, and how the Pacific encounters changed and reoriented their meanings. For further info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2010/professor_simon_schaffer.shtml