The first surprise, or not so much a big surprise, is that Europe pretty much took all the credit for scientific discovery. In many ways, colonialism has set different cultures back many many years, and scientific advancements of ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia and China have been negatively impacted as well. Mathematics and science weren’t invented by one nation, yet, Europe tends to take most of the credit for it through political motivations and desires for dominance.
Much of the renaissance was attributed to the Ancient Greek, and its mathematical knowledge was understandably tied to Ancient Greek mathematicians. However, it is interesting to see that most of the Greek mathematicians studied from scholars in Egyptian and Arabic civilizations. It is unfortunate that throughout history, credits for those nations in Eurocentric mathematics were often ignored, but it is heartening to see those civilizations brought up to the light. However, on the contrary, since the Greek kept learning and refining what they have learned, despite the collapse of some civilizations, the knowledge that they had retained lives onto future generations to come.
Lastly, Figure 1.4 was a something that I had never thought of. Mathematics is a field of study that is universally studied no matter the culture and intelligence. It is one of the most crucial subject to learn as it is used in all cultures, whether it be farming or currency exchanges. So many different civilizations contributed together indirectly to build upon the knowledge we have today, and iconically, Europe was a key players in tying all the nations together. By using what they have learned from many different cultures, Europe was able to develop modern mathematics from those sources. But even though Europe helped tie everything together, I am eager to learn the mathematics of other cultures. Just like convergent evolution in biology, mathematics was developed by many regions individually, yet, every culture ended up finding similar things. So to build on top of the shoulders of giants, we have all of those ancestors to thank for our modern understanding of the language of mathematics!
Great post, Leon! The current world views are indeed still quite dominantly Eurocentric, including our math curriculum. Hopefully, as more math educators advocate for culturally relevant pedagogy, we could introduce more non-European history of mathematics to our students and show them how brilliant people were back then in other areas of the world, too!
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