Is there no *objective* progress, no development, no advance in
mathematics? Would we not be justified in thinking that our present
mathematics (as practiced and tought in universities around the world) is
*objectively* much more advanced than--and in *this* sense superior to--the
mathematics of the ancient world? And along this *objective* scale of
progress, is not the mathematics of ancient Greece (as exemplified, say, in
the writings of Archimedes) considerably more advanced than the mathematics
of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, as far as we can tell from the documents
that have come down to us? Or are such non-relativist thoughts simply the
result of class bias, Eurocentrism and the damage inflicted by imperialism
on our thinking?
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