History or Heritage? A Central Question in the Historiography of Mathematics

Abstract

The pasts and the futures The growth in interest and work in the history of mathematics in the last three decades or so has led naturally to reactions among mathematicians. Some of them have been welcoming, and indeed have contributed their own historical research; but many others have been cautious, and even contemptuous about the work produced by practising historians for apparently limited lack of knowledge of mathematics.1 By the latter they usually mean the current version of the mathe- matics in question, and the failure of historians to take due note of it.