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Philosophia Mathematica Advance Access originally published online on February 13, 2009
Philosophia Mathematica 2009 17(3):378-381; doi:10.1093/philmat/nkp003
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©The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Book Review

C.K. RAJU. Cultural Foundations of Mathematics: The Nature of Mathematical Proof and the Transmission of the Calculus from India to Europe in the 16th c. CE.

José Ferreirós*

* Departamento de Filosofia y Logica, Universidad de Sevilla, 41018 Sevilla, Spain. josef@us.es

C.K. RAJU. Cultural Foundations of Mathematics: The Nature of Mathematical Proof and the Transmission of the Calculus from India to Europe in the 16th c. CE. History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization. Vol. X, Pt 4. New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations/Delhi: Pearson Education, 2007. ISBN 81-317-0871-3. Pp. xlv + 477

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

This book is part of a major project undertaken by the Centre for Studies in Civilizations (New Delhi), being one of a total of ninety-six planned volumes. The author is a statistician and computer scientist by training, who has concentrated on historical matters for the last ten years or so. The book has very ambitious aims, proposing an alternative philosophy of mathematics and a deviant history of the calculus. Throughout, there is an emphasis on the need to combine history and philosophy of mathematics, especially in order to evaluate properly the history of mathematics in India, in particular the history of the calculus.

The pivotal goals of the book are (i) to oppose the Eurocentric account of the history of science in general and mathematics in particular; (ii) to avoid the usual philosophical idea of the centrality of proof for mathematical knowledge, in favour of the traditional Indian notion of . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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