Ethnomathematics
Categories: Mathematics and culture | Mathematics stubs
Ethnomathematics is the study of mathematics that considers the culture in which mathematics arises. Ethnomathematicians typically take the view that any mathematics is an artifact of a particular culture. This study contributes to the understanding of cultures, but, reciprocally, to the understanding of mathematics.
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Subject matter
Subjects which are studied in ethnomathematics include but are not limited to:
- Numeral systems
- Architecture
- Weaving
- Games of skill and chance, which fall under:
Criticism
Criticism of ethnomathematics comes in two forms.
First, critics of ethnomatematics claim that most books on the subject emphasize the differences between cultures rather than the similarities. These critics would like to see emphasis on that fact that, for example, negative numbers have been discovered on three independent occasions, in China, in India, and in Europe, and in every culture mathematicians discovered the same rule for multiplying negative numbers. Pascal's triangle was discovered in China long before it was discovered in Europe by Pascal, but the Chinese triangle has exactly the same properties as the European triangle. These critics would like to see ethnomathematics emphasize the unifying aspects of mathematics.
Second, critics claim that courses that emphasize ethnomathematics spend too little time on teaching useful mathematics, and teach multi-culturalism and pseudoscience instead. An example of this criticism is an article by Marianne M. Jennings in the Christian Science Monitor, April 7, 1996, titled "'Rain Forest' Algebra Course Teaches Everything But Algebra". Another example is the article "The Third Mathematics Education Revolution" by Richard Askey, published in Contemporary Issues in Mathematics Education (Press Syndicate, Cambridge, UK, 1999), in which he accuses Focus on Algebra, the same Addison-Wesley textbook criticized by the Christian Science Monitor, of teaching pseudoscience, claiming for South Sea Islanders mystic knowledge of astronomy more advanced than scientific knowledge.
See also
Further reading
- Ethnomathematics: A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas by Marcia Ascher, ISBN 0412989417
- Closs, M. P. (Ed.). (1986). Native American mathematics. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
- Eglash, Ron. (1999). African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press.
- Joseph,George Gheverghese. The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics. 2nd. ed. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
- Powell, Arthur B. and Marilyn Frankenstein, (eds.) 1997. Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism in Mathematics Education. Albany: University of New York Press.
- Zaslavsky, Claudia. 1973, 1999. Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Cultures (third revised edition). Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books.
External links