The first thing that surprised me was how Eurocentrism in mathematical history is constantly being perpetuated even to this date. This reminds me of my middle school math teacher complaining that the world-recognized origin of the Pythagorean theorem was largely western, which was contrary to his belief that the theory started from China. According to ancient Chinese literature, it was called gou-gu theory discovered by a teacher Chen Zi and his student Rong Fang. They were not known historically, unfortunately. In the book, Joseph describes the marginalization of non-European contributions in mathematical history. This could possibly be the cause of the lost documentations, or lack of credits given to math pioneers.
Another thing that surprised me was the exclusion of non-European math contributions through the education system. I found that this is still the case in the modern day school curriculums. In high school, I briefly learned Pascal's triangle. However, multiple mathematicians in the past have made significant contributions to the topic, such as the Chinese mathematician Yang hui. However, we didn’t learn the diverse historical background of the math concept, and we simply accepted the idea that it only has one original root.
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Fantastic post, Caris! Being ethnically Chinese, I did not come across of the story of Chen Zi and Rong Fang in Zhoubi Suanjing until my master’s! Unfortunately, our worldviews are still very much dominated by Eurocentric perspectives. With the growing push for culturally relevant pedagogy, hopefully more of us math educators will incorporate non-European history of mathematics into our classrooms and help students appreciate the incredible contributions made by different cultures throughout history.
ReplyDeleteWe will take a deeper dive into ancient Chinese mathematics later in the course, and I look forward to hearing your insights!