Reflections on the Crest of the Peacock
I generally consider myself decently knowledgable about the history of mathematics, for someone with no previous formal training or coursework in the area. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find the lengths that Western (meant to denote Europe, Canada, the US, New Zealand and Australia; Joseph prefers the term European) historians and writers went to in order to devalue the mathematical contributions of non-Western societies. Reading Joseph, this makes sense, since one of the implicit goals in writing these histories is to “[Ignore and devalue] the contributions of the colonized people … as part of the rationale for subjugation and dominance” (Joseph 2011, p. 5). Nevertheless, it was surprising to me that it was known, at least by some, that there was “full acknowledgement given by the ancient Greeks themselves of the intellectual debt they owed the Egyptians” (Joseph 2011, p.5). I don’t know the exact timeline in which these acknowledgements were discovered, but it strikes me as v...
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