for the learning of mathematics

I. Introductory remarks In this paper we will discuss some basic issues which may lay  ground for an historical approach to  teaching of mathematics in a novel way. Our project relies primarily on developing  concept of ethnomathematics. Our subject lies on  borderline between  history of mathematics and cultural anthropology. We may conceptualize ethnoscience as  study of scientific and, by extension, technological phenomena in direct relation to their social, economic and cultural backgrounds [1]. There has been much research already on ethnoastronomy, ethnobotany, ethnochemistry, and so on. Not much has been done in ethnomathematics, perhaps because people believe in  universality of mathematics. This seems to be harder to sustain as recent research, mainly carried on by anthropologists, shows evidence of practices which are typically mathematical, such as counting, ordering, sorting, measuring and weighing, done in radically different ways than those which are commonly taught in  school system. This has encouraged a few studies on  evolution of  concepts of mathematics in a cultural and anthropological framework. But we consider this direction to have been pursued only to a very limited and we might say timid extent. A basic book by R.L. Wilder which takes this approach and a recent comment on Wilder's approach by C. Smorinski [2] seem to be  most important attempts by mathematicians. On  other hand, there is a reasonable amount of literature on this by anthropologists. Making a bridge between anthropologists and historians of culture and mathematicians is an important step towards recognizing that different modes of thoughts may lead to different forms of mathematics; this is  field which we may call ethnomathematics. Anton Dimitriu's extensive history of logic [3] briefly describes Indian and Chinese logics merely as background for his general historical study of  logics that originated from Greek thought. We know from other sources that, for example,  concept of the number  is a quite different concept in ...

Ethnomathematics and its Place in the History and Pedagogy of Mathematics.