Ethnomathematics - Criticism

Criticism

There has been criticism of ethnomathematics. Criticism comes in three forms.

First, some have objected to applying the name "mathematics" to subject matter that is not developed abstractly and logically, with proofs, as in the academic tradition descended from Hellenistic Greeks like Pythagoras, Euclid, and Archimedes and comparable traditions in China, Japan, and India. They posit that mathematics consists of objective truths that are not subject to cultural differences. An opponent of ethnomathematics may claim that pointing out that many cultures have arrived at different ways of counting on their fingers is not as insightful, on objective terms, as Cantor's work on infinity, for example. Moreover, some academic mathematicians feel that ethnomathematics is more properly a branch of anthropology than mathematics. An ethnomathematician might reply that ethnomathematics is not meant to be a branch of mathematics nor of anthropology, but combines elements of both in something different from either.

Second, some critics of ethnomathematics claim that most books on the subject emphasize the differences between cultures rather than the similarities. These critics would like to see emphasis on the fact that, for example, negative numbers have been discovered on three independent occasions, in China, in India, and in Germany, and in all three cultures, mathematicians discovered the same rule for multiplying negative numbers. Pascal's triangle was discovered in China, India and Persia long before it was discovered in Europe, and all found exactly the same properties as did the European discoverers. These critics would like to see ethnomathematics emphasize the unifying aspects of mathematics. An ethnomathematician may reply that these critics overlook the central role in ethnomathematics of how mathematics arises in ordinary life.

Third, some critics claim that mathematics education in some countries, including the United States, unduly emphasizes ethnomathematics in order to promote multiculturalism while spending too little time on core mathematical content, and that this often results in pseudoscience being taught. An example of this criticism is an article by Marianne M. Jennings in The Christian Science Monitor, April 2, 1996, titled "'Rain Forest' Algebra Course Teaches Everything But Algebra". Another example is the article "The Third Mathematics Education Revolution" by Richard Askey, published in Contemporary Issues in Mathematics Education (Press Syndicate, Cambridge, UK, 1999), in which he accuses Focus on Algebra, the same Addison-Wesley textbook criticized by the Christian Science Monitor, of teaching pseudoscience, claiming for South Sea islanders mystic knowledge of astronomy more advanced than scientific knowledge. The student of ethnomathematics can answer such criticisms by saying that there is a large body of good ethnomathematical research to which they do not apply, and this body is the main part of the subject.