Re: [HM] Is Greek mathematics the *real* thing?
Gordon Fisher (gfisher@shentel.net)
Wed, 04 Nov 1998 22:26:09
At 06:31 PM 11/4/98 GMT, Moshe' Machover wrote:
>I would like to ask a heretical question.
>
>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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What would an objective scale for measuring progress or advance or
retrogression in mathematics look like? Wouldn't answers to this question
lead to vexed questions of what's objective and what isn't? And whether or
not there is in practice such a thing as objectivity among subjects like
us, as contrasted with ideals or dreams of objectivity? I take it this is
what the much discussed investigations of postmodernists is about, although
it's not new to ask questions about whether different cultures
*necessarily* have different kinds of mathematics as a result of their
cultural milieux, or rather that there is a universal mathematics, valid in
all planets and all galaxies.
Gordon Fisher gfisher@shentel.net