A Historiographical Proposal for Non-Western Mathematics

Abstract

This paper focus on the social, political and cultural factors in the dynamics of the transfer and the production of scientific and mathematical knowledge in the colonies, as well as on the recognition of non-European forms of science and mathematics, either extant or buried in the colonial process. This is a historiography proposal, which relies on the memory of people and events that survived in a literate era. The methodology puts together scraps of information in non-traditional historic sources and recognizes extant practices, normally called ethno-science and ethnomathematics.