
Western mathematics: the secret weapon of cultural imperialism - fforflo
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.462.7279&rep=rep1&type=pdf
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dawnbreez
Tl;dr: We are horrible people for having our own abstractions for measuring
angles, lengths, etc., and we should've let everyone invent their own system.

If we did so, we would have better multiculturism now at the cost of making
all forms of physics, electronics, and engineering an absolute nightmare. If
one man's measure of length does not convert cleanly to another's, then they
won't get any work done, because they won't know how long the bridge's posts
should be. If a degree is 1/360th of a circle to one man, and 1/200th of a
circle to another, the 45 degrees varies wildly between the two, and once more
nothing gets done. The list goes on.

~~~
xlm1717
If even mathematics becomes subject to PC nonsense... well, time to close up
shop and head home, we had a good run. Eventually the idea that some Party
will announce that two plus two makes five will stop seeming like dystopian
fiction and start looking realistic.

~~~
dawnbreez
As this article suggests, it's more likely that they'll push for the use of
"traditional ____ units", which will be completely arbitrary, especially since
most of the people who knew what these units were are long dead. Converting
between them will be a nightmare, and if people start demandimg that, say, all
buildings for African-Americans be measured in units used by the Zulu tribes,
it'll cause even more divides between white workers ("Why can't we just use
feet?") and black workers ("This measurement is _my_ heritage, why don't you
want to use it?") This will, of course, be attributed to racism, because
scapegoats are useful for such things.

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lazyant
Author is confusing Mathematics with some subjective representations like
using decimal vs another number base or the arbitrary 360 degrees in a circle,
that by the way is not western, it comes from Egypt or some Middle-East
culture, can't remember now (and we also use the non-arbitrary 2*pi angle),
Math won't change by changing such representations. We have International
System units and Imperial measurement units and science is the same regardless
of what units you use.

Other ideas of "space time" or whatever of some cultures, well, they need to
be formalized and expressed properly so see if they have any real value beyond
the verbal idea, that's how math and science works.

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cafard
Hey, "Arabic" numerals are finally conquering Roman numerals at the Super
Bowl. Take heart!

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daodedickinson
Sometimes my brain automatically searches and replaces "imperialism" with
"excellence" and "elitist" with "excellent", but this title still doesn't make
sense because there's nothing made secret about "Western" math, just people
envying to learn it with less effort.

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xlm1717
There are so many things to pick apart in this paper:

"But where do ’degrees’ come from? Why is the total 180? Why not 200, or 100?
Indeed, why are we interested in triangles and their properties at all? The
answer to all these questions is, essentially, ’because some people determined
that it should be that way’."

The author briefly touches upon Euclidean geometry and offering alternate
geometries, but seemingly forgot that (western) mathematicians have been
considering non-Euclidean geometry for at least a couple hundred years. We
have rigorous answers on why a triangle is 180 degrees in Euclidean geometry
and why it can be more or less in other geometries. We might not be teaching
this in primary school (because it can get complicated), but math majors learn
this stuff all the time. It's not just that "some people determined that it
should be that way." Many people determined the many different ways it could
be through things like logic and reasoning (which the author also attacks).

"For example, we are now aware of the fact that many different counting
systems exist in the world."

We were always aware? The classical example that comes up even in primary
school is how the Babylonians used base 60 and connecting that to 60 minutes
in an hour. Mathematicians are well aware of different counting systems.
Indeed they even use number systems based on irrational numbers, like e, when
it makes formulas easier to use.

"Facts like these challenge fundamental assumptions and long-held beliefs
about mathematics."

These are being challenged by mathematicians themselves all the time.
Principia Mathematica anyone? Godel's incompleteness theorems anyone?

After reading that paper, I think the author's mistake was considering that
small sliver of mathematics that is taught in primary school, and not
considering the enormous field that exists and is accessible only after many
years in college/university.

At least at one point the author does concede that multiple cultures
contribute to mathematics (Arabic/Indian numerals that we use today being the
most visible examples), not just "western" culture, and that many
mathematicians around the world would object to what is essentially the
politicization of mathematics, but then the author considers these objections
irrelevant to the point he's trying to make. In fact, the author then goes on
to call teaching advanced mathematics "elitist", and even attacks rationality
and how we dare use inductive reasoning over intuition... what?? The kind of
mental gymnastics needed to accept most of the arguments made in this paper...
well, you won't have much mental energy to do actual math after dealing with
that much cognitive dissonance.

