 Eurocentrism in the history and philosophy of mathematics

 The resist bias that claims that the European mind and its cultural product are superior to
those of other people and races
 During the past two hundred years or so ancient Greece has been talked up as the starting
point of modern European thought and the afroasiatic roots of classical civilization have
been neglected, discarded ad denied.
 Mathematics has been seen as the product of European mathematicians
 Common features of Eurocentric histories of mathematic in to claim that it was primarily
the invention of ancient Greeks. Their period was ended almost 2000 years and followed
by dark age of around 1000 years until the European renaissance triggered by the
rediscovery of Greek learning leas=d to modern scientific and mathematical work in
Europe.
 Some accounts of development of Egyptian, Babylonian and contributions of Indian and
Arabic mathematician was acknowledged

Renaissanc
Dark Age

Discovery of Greek

e
Greek Europe and its
learning
cultural dependencies
Eurocentric chronology of mathematician history

Egypt
Arab

Europe and its

Greek
Dark age cultural dependencies

Babylonian India
Modified Eurocentric Model
HIND
U

BAGHDAD Europe and its

BABYLONIAN cultural dependencies
ARAB
EMPIRE
CHINA

Egypt
Non European mathematics during Dark Age
 According to Joseph, a variety of mathematical activities and exchange between the
numbers of cultural are went on while European was in a deep sylmzer.
 Eurocentric history of mathematics neglects the non European roots of mathematics.
 There is a small but growing impact of such critical ideas in the history of and philosophy
of mathematics.
 There is an under emphasize on the vital role of pre Hellenic civilizations in providing
the conceptual basis for modern mathematics through calculation and problem solving.
Mathematics of the Indian subcontinent and Kerala
 Eurocentric view of mathematics has been the ignoring or undervaluing f the
contributions to mathematics of Indian subcontinent.
 Long presence of deductive proof in mathematics, invention of zero has been long
acknowledged.
 According to Pearce(nd) Indian development of decimal numeration with place value
system is most remarkable development in the history of mathematics and human kind.
 More attentions are given to the large numbers including power of 10 up to near 50.
 Extension of decimal value system into decimal fractions helped in the conceptualization
and formation of the remarkable series expansion developed in Kerala furthermore
convergence of series.
 Kerala mathematicians discovered and elaborated a large number of infinite series
expansions and contributed in calculus which Kerala discovered 2 century before
Europeans.
 Madhava , the Kerala mathematician as well as astronomer attributed to limit, the passes
of infinity and essence of modern classical analysis.
 Discovered numerous infinite series expansion of trigonometric and root terms as well as
for  up to 13 decimal places. These important results anticipate some of the discoveries
attributed to or named after the great mathematicians wills, Tylar, lebnitz, Euler,etc.
 Madhava a founder of analysis Keralese contributions anticipate development in western
Europe and other in work in infinite series for numerical integration results.
 There are no miraculous or unexpected jumps in the development of calculus and infinite
series in 17th century Europe that one might have expected to appear in the record
following the appropriation of results from Kerala.
 THE Kerala and Indian subcontinent contributions to history of mathematics remarkable
 But the traditional histories failed to acknowledge there and other non European
contributions due to ignorance
 Two sets of ideological presuppositions
 Epistemological prejudice toward certain style of math namely the axiomatic theories and
purist ideas as well as favoring proofs over calculation and applied mathematics.
 Ideological presuppositions:
 o racial prejudice of Eurocentrism namely western mind I capable of the pure
thought and insights in the highest forms of mathematics so contribution of Indian
subcontinent , Asian , African are discounted and minimized.

Nature of Hindu mathematics

Philosophy of mathematics

The philosophy of mathematics address the question of the answer as

What is the basis for mathematical knowledge?

What is the nature of mathematical truth?

What is the justification for their assertion?

What are the truths of mathematics necessary truths?

A set of propositions with a set of procedures for verifying them or providing a warrant for their
assertion is epistemology.

Before inquiring the nature of mathematical knowledge we first know about the knowledge. The
knowledge is justified belief. The set of accepted propositions is called propositional knowledge.
In mathematical knowledge about 2500 years ago, Euclid’s elements are in logical structure that
are established in truth and logic in 19th century by Newton mainly there are two types of
knowledge

1 Priori 2. Posteriori

The knowledge which consists of propositions which are asserted on the basis if reason
(deductive reasoning) along and meanings and definitions of terms is called priori knowledge.
The mathematical knowledge is priori knowledge since it includes deductive logic and definition
which are used in conjunction with an assumed set of mathematical axioms and postulates. The
foundation of mathematical knowledge is the ground for asserting the truth of mathematical
propositions, consists of deductive proof.

The Posteriori knowledge consists of propositions asserted on the basis of experience, based on
observational world. The proof of mathematical proposition is a finite sequence of statements
ending in het proposition which satisfies the following property.

Nature of mathematical knowledge

Absolutist view of mathematical knowledge is that it consists of certain and unchallengeable
truths.

Mathematical knowledge is made up of absolute truths and represents the unique realm of certain
knowledge. Apart form logic and statements true by virtue of the meaning of terms.

The grounds of claiming the mathematics (and logic) provided absolutely true are

1. the basic statements used in proof of mathematics are taken to be true.

Mathematical axioms are assumed to be true
In developing systems under consideration definitions are by fiat, logical axioms are
accepted as true.
2. The logical rules of inference preserve truth
This shows that all the mathematical theorems are established by means of deductive
proofs.

Two Types of assumptions

Those of mathematics concerning the axioms and definitions
These of logic assumptions of axioms, rules of inference and the formal language and
syntax
Absolutistic view of mathematical knowledge encountered problems at the beginning of
20th century by driving antinomies and contradictions. Then different school of thought in
mathematics arouse.

There are three schools of thought they are logicism, formalism and intutionism or
constructivism.
Logicism
Logicism regards the pure mathematics as part of logic
The main proponents are Frage, Russell, whitehead, Carnap etc.
Bertrand Russell formulates two claims:
- all the mathematical concepts can ultimately be reduced to logical concepts, provided
that are taken to include the concepts of set theory
- All mathematical truths can be proved form the axioms and rules of inference of logic
alone.
If all the mathematics ca be expressed in purely logical terms and proved form logical
principles alone, then the certainty of mathematical knowledge can be reduced to that
logic
The non logical axioms such as the axiom of infinity and axioms of choice are
required in mathematics so second statement is foundered.
So, all the mathematics theorems canot be derived from the axioms of logic alone and
depends upon the irreducible set of mathematical assumptions, since number of
mathematical axioms are independent. So, their negation canbe adopted without
 consistency to solve this. Russell retreated the weaker version of logicism called if-
thenism which A-> T i.e pure mathematics consists of implication statements.(A->T)
Then the mathematical assumptions on which the theorem depends are now
incorporated into new format of the theorem. (A->T). Then mathematics is called
hypothetico-deductive system.
After invention of Peano arithmetic this if thenism is also failure. The Goodle’s
incompleteness theorem is the second objection and third is certainty and reliability.
Thus the logicist program of reducing the certainty of mathematical knowledge to that
of logic failed in principle logic does not provide a certain foundation for
mathematical knowledge.
Formalism
Another thought of absolutism is formalism. The Main proponents of formalism are
Hilbert, Neuman and curry. According to Hilbert, mathematics can be translate into
un-interopreted formal system
1. Pure mathematics can be expressed as uninterpreted formal system in which truth
of mathematics are respresented by formal theories.
2. The safety of these formal systems can be demonstrated in terms of their freedom
from inconsistency by means of meta mathematics.
But these canot be fulfilled by Goodle’s incomplete theorems by finding
incompleteness in theorems.
Derive theorems from the axiom strings by finitely many applications of rules of
inference. Prove that the rules of inference produce no contradictory sentence, by purely
finite reasoning about strings of symbols.
• Axioms are akin to rules of a game
• Rules of inference or laws of logic describe the legitimate moves that can be made
Valid Theorem – ‘a certain statement can be obtained from certain other statements by
means of certain processes of manipulation

Intuitionism/constructivism

Kant and Kronecker, Bower, Bishop, Heyting are the main proponent. Reconstruction of
mathematical knowledge and reforming mathematical practice in order to safeguard it form loss
of meaning and form contradiction.

Constructivist reject non-constructive arguments for example canter set and proof of real number
is uncountable.

Various forms of constructivism still flourish today includes whole range of different views form
the ultra intuitivism.
The classical mathematics may be unsafe and that needs to be rebuilt by constructive method and
reasoning.

Both mathematical truth and existence of mathematical objects must be established by

constructive method.