“Decolonising Math”: Durham U Asks Professors to Consider Race of Mathematicians | Hacker News Reader

“Decolonising Math”: Durham U Asks Professors to Consider Race of Mathematicians

jonathanturley.org

80 pointsleephillips100 comments

What the…?

Do they imagine people in Africa, Latin America or Asia will give a rat’s arse about the ‘race of the mathematician’ they are citing?

It’s math. I don’t recall scrutinizing the ‘race’ of the mathematicians of antiquity or the renaissance or modern times when I was in school.

These idiots want to inject ‘race’ into everything.

This is utterly idiotic. What’s the point, to achieve paralysis?

At the height of the Cold War, when the fate of civilization was in the balance, still we gave credit where credit was due -so long as translations existed to give people proper credit. But this?

What happens when they get to philosophy --do they discard all of Western philosophy its derivatives and then construct something parallel but not quite copying it because, obviously it would have problematic underpinnings and unwanted ways of thinking and processing.

Are Indo-European languages 'racist', do we invent grunts to communicate?

We're in this weird point of attribution where the discoveries and popularizations of white men (in a society they created and dominated mind you) must now be discredited because similar theories existed in cultures and languages that are extinct, or we know little about, or are poorly documented. Convergent discoveries.

In essence, 'white mathematics' is wrong because mathematical concepts existed in ambiguous points in times in undocumented or undiscovered regions of the world. We must now attribute these regions because...white men are bad ok? Nevermind that we can historically correlate these discoveries in a somewhat chronological timeline of innovation in our own western history. We can reverse engineer these discoveries and see that other cultures had similarly convergent ideas that sometimes predate discoveries in western history. It's important to give proper attribution where attribution is due, and I actually have no problem with this. It's cool to know that ancient India had such an advanced mathematical field of study for example.

We frame these in a racist structure because... white civilization is bad? Is basically the gist I'm getting out of this. Which is why I think you and frankly most people reading that article are getting offended. Especially when you acknowledge mathematics as being a purely logical language used to express abstractions

> What’s the point, to achieve paralysis?

Yes.

Here's a one hour lecture from a KGB defector who's explains what's going on:

15 min lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQPsKvG6WMI

1 hour lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-cWbq1PoSw

TL;DR: It's intentional, it's going to get way worse, and if you get too loud in opposition you will find yourself ostracized and possibly without a job.

2010-2020: a decade of Field's medalists:

  Elon Lindenstrauss   Israel 
  Ngô Bảo Châu         Vietnam 
  Stanislav Smirnov    Russia 
  Cédric Villani       France 
  Manjul Bhargava.     United States 
  Maryam Mirzakhani    Iran
  Martin Hairer        Austria 
  Akshay Venkatesh     Australia

Notably, without exception, all of them were associated with IAS at some point.

Seems biggest consideration here for DurhamU would be to consider making their own very successful IAS and curate that institute membership to whatever criteria and see how it competes globally. Looking forward to their contribution to Ma.

more on DurhamU: I cannot even locate their Math ranking, but with #701 ranking in Engineering, and #310 in Physics, seems they've got plenty of work ahead of them to even come close to the IAS. (usnews rankings)

an irrelevant un-ranked institution making noise?

>Director of Graduate Studies of History Erik Loomis that “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist.”

History department dictates Math dept policy in DurhamU?

  "#263 in Best Global Universities"

  #54 in Arts in Humanities.
  #310 in Physics.
  #701 in Engineering.

is this what a great STEM school looks like?

rankings: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/du...

This is the "Decolonisation" statement on the Durham University math department's web site:

https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/mathematical-s...

As an example, from the section labeled "Suggestions and resources": "Consider giving short biographies of the mathematicians whose work you present in your modules. If in doing so you realise that they are almost entirely (or even completely) white and/or male, ask yourself why this is. See if you can find contributions to the field from mathematicians of other genders/ethnicities."

From some of the other comments here, maybe the original article gave the impression of coerced or repressed speech, but I don't see that in this statement. The section is labelled "Suggestions and resources". The quote above uses wording like "Consider giving", "ask yourself", "See if you can". The tone of the statement as a whole is similar.

I was a math professor for 38 years. I'm actually kind of opinionated about my teaching, and never cared for people telling me what to say or do. But there was nothing here that pushed my buttons - and in fact, some of the suggestions seemed pretty reasonable.

Called it. No imperious mandate from on high, just some reasonable suggestions on a website.

A ton of HN regulars seem unwilling to apply a microsecond of skepticism to these articles.

pushing official policy via deniable "private" distribution channels has been the SOP in the West for a long time.

Perfectly valid assumption, especially given this verbiage in the source article, which you can verify for yourself: "Durham University is calling on professors in the math department"

The employer told employees what to do. The end.

> just some reasonable suggestions on a website.

I'm not terribly familiar with the inner workings of Durham U but I know that in the business world a "suggestion" can mean anything from "do this if you feel like it" to "you are in serious trouble if you don't do this" depending on context.

The context here is definitely "do this if you feel like it". This is a list of suggestions posted under the "Equality, Diversity & Inclusion" header. Mandatory policies just aren't posted in that section of a university's website. Most of the concrete actions are specifically noted by the section header as "Suggestions & Resources".

The concrete things you're mentioning don't sound unreasonable.

Zero as we know it -- and all our numerals and base-10 system -- were developed in Hindu mathematics, used by Arab traders, and carried to Renaissance Italy by an Italian. And its sources were acknowledged at the time. That's quite a compelling story.

"The method" of Al Jabbar -- algebra -- is another important thing.

And a great deal of mathematics was developed in ancient China, (though Chinese culture has never tended to spread so much). This fact is now remembered in such phrases as the "Chinese Remainder Theorem", but to delve deeper into this history could be good.

So there's plenty that could be reasonably included in a curriculum, which would improve that curriculum.

There's also no denying that Euler and Gauss were absolute powerhouses, or that a lot of early-modern mathematics was developed in Europe.

(As you get into more advanced physics, you start to see more Japanese names, too. Things that developed a little later.)

So all that's fine.

The problem is this: This phrase "de-colonization" is so hugely and dangerously loaded that it refers to much more than all of the above.

Decolonization is Ugandans seizing Indian businesses and threatening to make concentration camps.

Decolonization is Partition, with mobs beating Muslims to death.

Decolonization is farm-killings in South Africa. It is an ANC that, far from speaking of a harmonious Rainbow Nation any more, is now openly making threats of violence on the campaign trail.

Decolonization is -- well what is it?

It means: White people leave. It means those who are not "indigenous" leave. It's a word with very strong overtones of ethnic cleansing.

It makes a certain amount of logical (if horrific) sense when applied to the Americas or Australia. Presumably all those people could be killed or sent back to Europe.

But what could it possibly mean when applied to the UK itself? Conquest?

Is it necessary to use such a violent concept to describe the creation of a rich, historically interesting, and cosmopolitan mathematics curriculum?

It isn't.

I think your point about the choice of words is a good one, and perhaps verified by many of the comments people made about the original article. A poor choice of words can do more harm than good. For instance, it's a bad sign when a slogan or phrase associated with one point of view is used in political ads by people with opposing points of view.

This often happens when we get angry about injustice, or when we think someone is making a mistake. The anger leads us to responses amounting to whacking someone upside the head, rather than responses which might make things better. When you teach, you find out that people will not learn things by being shamed, guilted, or insulted. But when you're angry, it can be hard to resist the temptation to vent your anger rather than trying to make things better. (And to be sure, sometimes forceful action is the best thing.)

Maybe (to use your words) the Durham statement should have been titled "Creating a Rich, Historically Interesting, and Cosmopolitan Mathematics Curriculum".

> it's a bad sign when a slogan or phrase associated with one point of view is used in political ads by people with opposing points of view.

This is a great observation that I'm going to remember.

Incentives are an issue. Within academia or the arts, say, an individual has every incentive to be "provocative" within their ideological bubble, even if the outcome of this internal status-seeking is a left-politics that is completely unpalatable to anyone outside that bubble. Now right-parties are beating left-parties over the head with the words of their own activist wings.

I contend that the academically-trendy "anticolonialist" rhetoric is exactly such an outcome. (In fact, it's more than that; the CCP propagandists love it.)

Indeed, you can be sure that the person who posted this article had right-sympathies. Because publicizing this sort of thing benefits the mainstream right, not the mainstream left.

I think many people in mainstream political parties do understand this -- for example, in American politics, the word you'll hear from Democrats is "progressive", which (while not completely free of problematic history), is not remotely so violent a phrase.

> Maybe (to use your words) the Durham statement should have been titled "Creating a Rich, Historically Interesting, and Cosmopolitan Mathematics Curriculum".

Thank you. That's why I offered it!

Please don't post flamewar rhetoric like this to HN. We want curious conversation. Those two things are not compatible.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is an insightful observation. Because there’s nothing wrong with trying to correct what might be incorrect or incomplete attributions, and (in my opinion) it can be beneficial to emphasize the contributions of non-“Western” mathematicians. So why is this rhetoric so offensive? It does come down to the use of the “colonization” terminology, and you’ve identified part of the reason.

I agree with most of the commentors here. This is completely insane and the people pushing this stuff are stupid.

But the thing that bothers me most is, if these people are so stupid, why do they keep winning?

My honest theory, being the victim feels good. It's easier to wrap up yourself in the warm blanket of victimhood when you're a loser.

Now, I should probably define "loser" a bit. Not in regards to wealth or career status. Generally, I mean someone that has zero going for them. No drive. No aspiration. No ambition. No skills. No pursuits. No self improvement. No self education. No... well... have you noticed the people loudest online regarding the whole victim this, victim that... if you took that away... what do they have? Like, you can't even nerd out with them about anything. No interests. No hobbies. Nothing really. Their entire personality and life comprises of this stuff. And I mean doing things within their control too. Sure, some aspirations are going to be out of your reach for one reason or another. Shit, all F1 drivers were pretty much chosen when they were sperm at this point. That's not in the cards for a lot of people. But to focus on a handful of things that don't work out for you and miss out on literally everything else the world has to offer... fuck, that's some childish shit. Which again, it's all just a tantrum of losers.

The real problem, kids are being raised that this line of thought is okay. It's encouraged and glamorized. Most of you here are programmers to some degree. If you have a few years under you're belt, you had that hazing period to become a "real programmer". That first problem/bug that could not be looked up. There was no pre-packaged solution. And you bashed your fucking head against that problem/bug day in and day out. You dreamt of it. You thought about it when you ate and when you shit. You refused to give up even though you thought you were NEVER going to figure it out... until one night you smashed that wall and grabbed the solution by it's neck.

Now imagine you thought it was computer science's fault because it was racist. Would you have solved it or just cried/whined?

Looking for the light in the darkest struggle is what most encouraging tales and stories are about, for a good reason. Even Beethoven's Ode to Joy has the themes of dark brooding, then the bright, large success in overcoming and not giving up. A good reason it's lasted this long. Hiding in the shadows of this racism/victimhood bullshit has got to stop or humanity is going to reap a barren field.

If it were just that victimhood feels good, that wouldn't be enough to keep this line of thinking alive. The bigger problem is that guilt feels good, and we have people thinking it's okay for powerful institutions to convince other people that they're powerless victims.

We might be arguing for the same thing, but semantics... Anyways what I'm getting at is, the victim-fetish, because let's be honest it's turned into a fetish, is a way to absolve yourself of responsibility. Maybe guilt is just that extra step of superficial absolution from your own actions. Kind of like a classical Catholic confessional. Forgive me father for I have sinned, I'm such a baaaaaaad boy. Look at me, I'm admitting to "bad". I'm innocent now....

Hell, it does seem nice to just feel guilty of stuff you literally can't control instead of admitting to the stuff you could control. Which goes to the victimhood. If you're a victim over every little thing, then "it's not my fault!" I mean... this is just going to be a long rant that's going to require me to explain one thing after another because there's a lot of nuance... probably the moral of the story, to what end does "math is racist" even serve? If someone sucks at math when it's deemed racist, they'll still suck even when it's not. Math "being racist" isn't why someone is a lazy, useless parasite on society. That person is the problem, but they don't have to face that fact not only to themselves, but society even rewards them by turning a blind eye on the dumbass waste of human potential. Maybe because society has collectively become more and more useless. Hell, maybe there's an evolutionary trait that sparks when a colony of mammals becomes too vast and wasteful, so it starts to self-cull. I don't know. Math... right... if you're too fucking stupid (this doesn't mean who I'm directly replying to by the way) to do math when it's racist, I promise you'll be too fucking stupid to do it when it's anti-racist. Because math hates you, just like it hates all of us. Equally. Put on the ball gag and nipple clamps and maybe... just maybe... math will give you a little tickle if you take your paddling well. Damn... I'm tired today... go away now...

> No interests. No hobbies. Nothing really. Their entire personality and life comprises of this stuff.

You could try asking them instead of completely fabricating an autonomotron made entirely out of straw.

I'm going to have to agree with the original commentor. A majority of people who stub their toe and blame racism, patriarchy or whatever else, are incredibly boring people. Anyone that's super dogmatic is typically a one trick pony. Sure there are exceptions, but I'm not going to get yelled at for having "micro aggressions" when asking someone "so what do you do for fun" when I already know the answer since they're an insufferable, self-righteous ass.

The reason the person you're imagining is a one-trick-pony with no thoughts beyond claiming oppression is that you're the one imagining them that way. This isn't a real specific person, it's a caricature in your head of the worst traits of a few people, that's applied to a group many times larger.

Cant speak for OP, but I do know specific people just like that. Too many actually. I think far too many introverts on HN imagine everyone else only knows a handful of people and think people only know other like minded individuals. Outside of the tech industry, it's very common for people to interact with a wide diversity of people.

> A majority of people who stub their toe and blame racism, patriarchy or whatever else, are incredibly boring people.

This is spot-on. These folks are essentially 21st century Puritans with all the joylessness and righteous moral outrage that comes with that. And yes, like the Puritans, they are just not very interesting people.

Steinbeck once said "a man has only himself as a meter stick" (paraphrasing).

Given an accusation of bias, most ppl imagine that they have wronged someone (b/c they can only imagine doing so honestly).

For narcissists, something not working out for them must be b/c of someone else. Here it takes the form of accusations of racism. This is preferable to narcissists as opposed to taking responsibility.

"Man is the measure of all things" - Protagoras

Marketing money....political favours.....blackmail... embezzlement.....Rico....

Much of this seems fair: are you using good examples and story problems? Māori jury pools seems a bit esoteric, especially in the UK.

Some examples used in math are extremely specific to certain background. For example, “The Josephus Problem” could probably have a more universally applicable name.

At the same time, just because you’re acknowledging some math education deals with social issues doesn’t mean you can throw out rigorous scholarships.

One of my professors specialized in the history of mathematics. It was popular to claim much of mathematics came from Egypt, not Greece. He did a very comprehensive survey of Egytian mathematics. A very common complain among Egyptian mathematicians was “almost everything in this field comes from the Greeks.”

Ancient Greece was a diaspora all around the Mediterranean. Ancient Egyptians have little relationship to modern Egypt.

That said ancient Egyptians certainly had to solve lots of math problems and they likely came up with lots of similar solutions.

There’s a big difference between coming up with “good enough” engineering solutions, and integrating a philosophical tradition with rigorous mathematics.

One the Greens were not good at was applied mathematics. They saw math as sacred, and avoided using it for “mundane” things.

For example, the ancient world had something similar to double ledge accounting, but none of the mathematicians tried to flesh it out.

It will be interesting how this affects quality of learning.

I’ve been to a few universities and some were not very educational although their degree was still a useful qualification for jobs that required a degree, any degree. In those universities, this wouldn’t have much of an effect because I just taught myself from books and grades and assignments didn’t equate to knowledge. I don’t care if those universities are diminished with this kind of stupid thinking.

But I’ve also been to great universities and it would be a shame to make them worse.

First of all the idea that "white" = "colonizing", "non-white" = "colonized" is in itself racist and wrong. There have been hundreds of racially "white" populations colonized by others. For current day example see Ukrainians fighting colonization by Russians as we speak. For other examples see Balts or Irish.

It is abusive and morally reprehensible to demand colonized people "check their privileges" just because in your ignorance you only consider their skin color as relevant. World is bigger than anglosphere, the criteria along which people were discriminated and subjugated varied significantly.

Second of all - the point that the article makes (should race be considered when evaluating mathematical ideas) is different from the point that most comments make (attribution is skewed towards white people). It's perfectly possible to admit skewed attribution and argue against it while agreeing with the article that value of math should not depend on the race of the person who proposes it. I'd call it the only sane option, even.

Indeed, this racist condemnation of all "white" people is compounded by its anglocentrism. The etymology[0] of the word "slave" is also historically interesting[1].

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=slave

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe

We are in the end state of an empire

Or at least the end state of Durham University.

One may hope.

can someone explain why teaching Pythagorean theorem is racist.

If we are talking about math and not “math history”, which mean i don’t care who was Euclid's how long ago he lived and what his race was.

But i am just teaching the formula and how to use it.

How is this white math or white privilege?

And how would you teach how to compute the length of the hypotenuse without being racist ?

You do not grok what is happening here. You are approaching the threat with a completely inadequate paradigm.

I do not believe HN moderation would permit me to explain further.

Well indulge us and attempt it.

Take the risk. Or make a throwaway.

I never said it was a threat, but the woke people claim the formula are racist so i give them the benefit of the doubt and willing to have someone explain why and how i should teach them in a less racist way.

> so i give them the benefit of the doubt and willing to have someone explain why and how i should teach them in a less racist way.

I think you misunderstand their motives here. I don't think even the wokest of the woke believes in their heart that math is racist. It's about power for its own sake.

By labeling this or that arbitrary thing as racist or colonialist or trans-phobic, these people force every conversation back to their topics, on their terms, and their turf. By doing this, they are A) Establishing themselves as the default moral authority, and B) Successfully pushing the idea that reality is nothing more than what they say it is.

As others have said, try us.

Generally speaking if you're making a good faith argument and doing so civilly, this place is pretty tolerant of all sorts of views even if not everyone shares them.

Supposedly it was stolen from Africa, at the time they were flying gliders off the pyramids.

Arabic sources say Euclid was born in Lebanon and lived in Alexandria. Amusingly these were Greek “colonies” both, but I don’t think that’s the colonisation that people care about these days.

The formula for the length of a hypotenuse of a right angled triangle is attributed to Pythagoras, not that the identity of the discoverer changes the truth of the mathematical identity one iota.

Itoa derives from the ancient Phoenician unit of measurement, which was “nobody cares, shut up already”.

Nobody described in either the article or the original source from the Telegraph seems to have made any of these claims. So I'm not sure why you're asking these questions here.

You are not the target audience for this. I would assume it would be helpful for kids to hear some familiar names when studying subjects here and there. I know you cannot relate AT ALL and I do not relate either (did not grow up in the West), but people who are POC get affected so much by such things, and I don't see it being the end of Western civilization of some of this things are adjusted. Most of crediting is just mythos not even real creating. Just like how randos are credited with inventing the web, browser, email, infinite scrolling, password... etc Elon Musk claiming (and the being believed) that he co-founded Tesla is example of such mythos.

I’m French. Pythagore is not even remotely French sounding. I never felt the urge to whine about it.

nice you are a badass!

Pythagore does not sound Chinese either and i never met a Chinese person concerned about it :-)

nice you are a badass!

It seems like the argument may come from C. K. Raju. See this 2017 article in the Journal of Black Studies, "Black Thoughts Matter: Decolonized Math, Academic Censorship, and the "Pythagorean" Proposition", https://www.jstor.org/stable/26174222

It's readable with a free JSTOR account, which might be worth it if you really care to understand the scholarly arguments, such as they are. At the very least, nobody will be able to say that you don't understand this particular argument.

It is amazing how some of the most educated people are amongst the dumbest. It literally has no impact if 100% of the mathematics we learn about are all from one race. Mathematics should be objective, either something is true or not. Who cares who discovered the various concepts?

Speaks volumes about the quality of education these days, doesn’t it?

>It literally has no impact if 100% of the mathematics we learn about are all from one race.

Except, if things were truly discovered first by other people, should we not give credit where credit is due? Are you uninspired when you hear of someone who you feel kinship for, for whatever reason, who has done a great thing? If so, know that that is not universal - plenty of people are inspired by that sort of thing. Getting it wrong means robbing that feeling from others on the basis of a lie.

>Mathematics should be objective, either something is true or not.

Agreed. And that means saying who discovered what - timelines like this aren't subjective. Pythagoras did not discover the theorem - it dates back to the Egyptians or Babylonians, and it was written of in a fairly extensive manner in India hundreds of years before Pythagoras as well. Just because their usage did not cross over to West doesn't mean that they were being used just as much or as significantly.

>Who cares who discovered the various concepts?

The goal is to get the objective part correct in giving credit where it is due. This also helps solve a whole host of other issues you might not believe exist, but even from that standpoint, this is the right thing to do if you truly want mathematics to be objective.

>Pythagoras did not discover the theorem - it dates back to the Egyptians or Babylonians, and it was written of in a fairly extensive manner in India hundreds of years before Pythagoras as well.

Ah, see viewpoints like these are why I suppose I take offense to the whole gist of this entire conversation.

Pythagoras absolutely did discover the theorem. Unless you can provide evidence that he was aware or attributed it to other regions or mathematicians? The Egyptians and Babylonians also discovered it as well. Convergent discoveries can occur. Your main notion is (I presume) about who discovered it first. Which is arguably somewhat of an important nomenclature.

But then let me ask you this:

How much weight can we attribute to the significance of this discovery to the Egyptians and Babylonians? When its Pythagoras' pupils and followers, benefactors and historians, who put his theorem to practical application and developed it further? Do we value the man who discovered the wheel, or the man who realized he could take that wheel, duplicate it, put a shaft between, and cart more things around? What about the man who taught others to do that?

Pythagoras was part of an institution of like minded thinkers which educated the ancient world (if you want to get pedantic, they were glorified tutors to rich kids, but they still got paid to think and spread their knowledge nonetheless). Their preserved writings arguably lay the foundations of western thought. That by itself, in my opinion, lends quite a lot of weight to the importance of his attribution to the discovery of the theorem, and why I feel like you've slighted Pythagoras more than you realize.

> Pythagoras absolutely did discover the theorem.

There is very little historical record of Pythagoras because he led a cult that was sworn to secrecy. He almost certainly did not discover the theorem himself.

>Pythagoras absolutely did discover the theorem. Unless you can provide evidence that he was aware or attributed it to other regions or mathematicians?

Well, to answer this we have to talk a bit about Pythagoras himself: We have basically zero ability to talk about him in general with any historical certainty. The original historical depictions of him even portray him as more of a mystic than a mathematician.

The historical evidence for Pythagoras studying in Egypt prior to the theorem being created is about as strong as any other evidence we have for things Pythagoras did, in which case, it is as plausible he learned it while there as anything else we know about him.

But then we have other problems: The first mention of the theorem being attributed to him doesn't appear in the historical record until centuries after his death. We have no direct evidence he was responsible for the (re)discovery of this theorem to begin with, so it might be a moot point that he might have studied in Egypt.

He's also written as having studied with the Mesopotamians, the Persians, the Galatians, the Indians, and the Assyrians, as well as multiple others, for years to decades each. These can't all be true.

>How much weight can we attribute to the significance of this discovery to the Egyptians and Babylonians? When its Pythagoras' pupils and followers, benefactors and historians, who put his theorem to practical application and developed it further? Do we value the man who discovered the wheel, or the man who realized he could take that wheel, duplicate it, put a shaft between, and cart more things around? What about the man who taught others to do that?

This all rings of having a very Western-centric view of the world. The Babylonians put it to practical use in land disputes. The Egyptians did as well - it would have been quite handy in building the pyramids. In India, it was originally used for properly spacing things for Vedic rituals, but was later used for architecture and a variety of other things. And this is quite simply a good view of why this is an issue: Your education focused on the Western uses of the theorem, giving you the mistaken idea that the practical application and spread of knowledge was limited to the West, when that simply isn't the case. It's not your fault - we're all products of our education to an extent, and I felt the exact same way for a long time. That's a large part about what Durham U and others are trying to fix with this sort of thing.

It is funny that you don't know who first discovered it, but you are positive it wasn't the Greeks.

Regardless, the Egyptians may have only discovered part of it. As far as I know, they didn't have any mention of triangles which is a rather critical part.

I don't know about the Babylonians but given your assumption about how much the Egyptians knew despite there being no proof it doesn't look promising for them either. I would welcome any actual proof you have though.

How do you know it was the Babylonians or the Egyptians? Why couldn't it have been somebody prior to them? You said it was written about extensively in India. How do you know it wasn't the Indians?

For that matter how do we know Greeks prior to Pythagoras were not the ones to discover it? If the Greeks discovered it and Pythagoras popularised it then the name would be fitting. You have to remember absence of proof is not proof of absence so you can't just say we can't find any Greek writing prior to writings in Egypt or Babylon.

>This also helps solve a whole host of other issues you might not believe exist

I agree that attributing the Pythagorean Theorem to the Egyptians would solve racism. /s

In all seriousness it wouldn't solve any problems if we said the Egyptians discovered it.

>It is funny that you don't know who first discovered it, but you are positive it wasn't the Greeks.

I'm positive it wasn't Pythagoras. Please argue against my actual statements instead of a strawman. How am I positive it wasn't Pythagoras? Because it existed before he did. That means that barring time travel, I can be positive it wasn't him, but still quite unsure on the first person or people to actually do so.

>Regardless, the Egyptians may have only discovered part of it. As far as I know, they didn't have any mention of triangles which is a rather critical part.

Your knowledge is incorrect - the argument that the Egyptians only discovered part of it is that we only have direct evidence of them doing it for the 3/4/5 triple, and that Pythagoras took that after his time in Egypt and generalized it for any right triangle.

>I don't know about the Babylonians but given your assumption about how much the Egyptians knew despite there being no proof it doesn't look promising for them either. I would welcome any actual proof you have though.

You're already operating from a false basis, but I can speak to the knowledge we have of Babylonians using the theorem: We have several sets of tablets from ancient Babylon that make use of triples for surveying land and calculating ownership. These tables of triples would have absolutely required understanding the theorem to create, and were generalized for use with right triangles. It's possible this knowledge was lost and the Egyptians only knew whatever triples made it to them and that Pythagoras re-discovered the broader use case, but it's also just possible the evidence that Egyptians could apply it more broadly has been lost to the sands of time. Regardless, we do know that Pythagoras is not the first person to discover the theorem.

>How do you know it wasn't the Indians?

I don't. Nor have I claimed to.

>I agree that attributing the Pythagorean Theorem to the Egyptians would solve racism. /s

I am trying to take your comment in good faith, but this makes it difficult to do so. Obviously, no one is claiming that solving this or any other single thing solves anything as large as racism, but mentioning that the theorem has been in use by many cultures that predates Pythagoras does help with the fundamental issue of providing an inaccurate picture of the history of mathematical discovery being as dominated by Western mathematicians as we make it out to be today.

Whether or not you care if the theorem was discovered by the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, or Indians doesn't mean that others don't, or that it doesn't play into forming a false sense of superiority about Western scholarly pursuits.

All it takes to help this situation is to provide some history on the theorem and mention that it was used prior to it's modern namesake and provide some examples and you correct a misleading narrative.

>In all seriousness it wouldn't solve any problems if we said the Egyptians discovered it.

Many people are unaware that many mathematical principles were discovered and re-discovered independently across many cultures and many different periods of time. They have a false picture of the history of math that makes it seem as if a huge chunk of the most important mathematical concepts were discovered exclusively by Western mathematicians.

If we need to get into a discussion about how that mistaken belief could play into racial biases, including unconscious ones, we can, but I hope that that is fairly apparent. I also hope it is fairly apparent how solving this could help inspire people from non-Western backgrounds as well, but, again, we can have that discussion if needed too.

>I'm positive it wasn't Pythagoras. Please argue against my actual statements instead of a strawman. How am I positive it wasn't Pythagoras

I was talking about the Greeks not Pythagoras. If previous Greeks discovered the theory and it was named after Pythagoras it would still mean that white people discovered it which is what the whole article is about.

Can you provide proof that the Egyptians or Babylonians had the entire theory? I asked in my previous comment but you didn't provide any. In the wiki article it says they had awareness of Pythagorean Triples but doesn't state they had the full theorem. The wiki says the theorem is actually 4 parts "The history of the theorem can be divided into four parts: knowledge of Pythagorean triples, knowledge of the relationship among the sides of a right triangle, knowledge of the relationships among adjacent angles, and proofs of the theorem within some deductive system." [1]

I think the problem is the last point which is possibly the missing part for the Egyptians and Babylonians. Do you have any proof that they had the last point?

I never made the claim Pythagoras discovered it. I even stated Greeks multiple times when referring to the discovery not Pythagoras. I even said "If the Greeks discovered it and Pythagoras popularised it then the name would be fitting."

We literally have no idea who discovered it. The Greeks spread it to the West where we named it after Pythagoras. We know the Greeks had fully developed it.

>I don't. Nor have I claimed to.

You said "it dates back to the Egyptians or Babylonians, and it was written of in a fairly extensive manner in India hundreds of years before Pythagoras as well." Maybe you just mean in that time period and not specifically those empires? Regardless, there were people in Greece during those times and since as you said you don't actually know who discovered it, it could very easily have been the Greeks. And like I said if the Greeks discovered it the whole point of the article is moot.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem

> They have a false picture of the history of math that makes it seem as if a huge chunk of the most important mathematical concepts were discovered exclusively by Western mathematicians.

Can you describe the "right picture" of mathematics?

Where would Real Analysis be without Newton, Leibniz, Cauchy, Weierstrass, etc.? Where would Set Theory be without Cantor, Zermelo and Fraenkel? Where would logic be without Russel, Tarski and Gödel? Where would computability theory (and thus, computers) be without Turing, Church and von Neumann? ... and so on

Unless you can find evidence that all these fields were independently studied elsewhere, or that those fields aren't important (tough sell), I will have to continue to believe that a large part of what is today's mathematics did originate in the West. That doesn't make the West "superior" (or deny the fact that, during certain periods, Europe was an intellectual backwater compared to other areas), but it's just how history went.

> The goal is to get the objective part correct in giving credit where it is due. This also helps solve a whole host of other issues you might not believe exist, but even from that standpoint, this is the right thing to do if you truly want mathematics to be objective.

You're confusing mathematics with the history of mathematics. The latter does exist as a discipline and can be interesting in its own right, but its insights don't fundamentally change what's mathematical truth or what not. It doesn't matter in the slightest who first discovered (and who first proved) that a^2+b^2=c^2. But you're not going to be able to change a name that's literally been around for centuries just because you don't like it for some arbitrary reason.

Also, IMHO, if anything it should be called Euclid's law of triangles or something, because his is the first known proof of the theorem. That the Babylonians and Egyptians knew about it is cool, but they didn't give us a proof (nor do I believe did they care about proof; that's a pretty Greek invention).

The noble goal of this movement is to correct the racism and oppression in mathematical discovery. But I wonder if its supporters possess any self awareness about the weight of tacitly expressing these statements in the language of an oppressor with the mathematical notation of an oppressor? To acknowledge discoveries and contributions from extinct civilizations is noteworthy, but also somewhat irrelevant. Because ultimately its the brutal adoption and efficient application of math, physics, and chemistry that helped Europeans dominate not only the field, but the rest of the world.

First parse was of relative velocity of fields of mathematics. Sounded great, I don't know where maths is advancing fastest.

Deeply disappointed that it's actually a call to introduce racism into the foundations of technology.

edit: Amused by the idea that failing to follow this agenda would compromise progression within the university.

Durham U's financials, especially sudden generous donations to its admins and professors, really deserve some attention. This wokeness campaign is a canonical example of astroturfing, funded by god knows who (CCP?), so fake it looks.

At what point does a legitimately motivated activity become illegitimate when it is partially funded, without the participants direct knowledge, by parties that hope the activity will undermine others?

Like, -- say there was a Save the Sea otter campaign that was pushing for closing down nuclear power plants because of their harm to the sea otter habitat (if this is actually a thing, sorry, I'm trying to make a silly example). This is a subject that reasonable people can differ on and it's very wholesome and within our tradition that people ought to be able to advocate for that. But then Russia hears about this and decides that getting rid of nuclear power would be bad for our economy, increase our dependency on their energy exports, and that the issue is the right mix of fringe and credible that it could become very divisive and distracting. ... So they massively fund it.

Would that make the issue any less legitimate? Why? it's not the fault of the advocates -- particular if they don't know that its being funded for malicious reasons or they aren't personally the recipients of the funding.

And if it doesn't make it less legitimate-- why would it be relevant to bring up in a discussion of the issue? It might be worth bringing up in the context of russian interference, but "our enemies fund this" isn't a particularly valid counter argument against the issue itself.

... particularly because the main motivation for malicious funding could be divisiveness rather than the advocated action itself being bad for us. If we did start to reject ideas because Russian funded promoting them then this would create an obvious vulnerability where they conspicuously fund the best ideas in order to kill them. You can't fight manipulation by doing the opposite of what it tells you to do since the manipulator can use reverse psychology.

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- Geronimo Gletkin

I think it's important to distinguish between what the university is actually asking academics to do, and what politically charged commentators are then adding to it and getting themselves (and some commenters here) outraged by. I think it's important to have a bit of intelligence about how you actually engage with this topic because what we have here is an article written by someone who clearly has an agenda and links out basically to his own other writing on the topic (as well as a culture war piece in a right wing newspaper), but doesn't link out to relevant things - such as the actual guidance the university is giving.

I actually think this article does a great job of demonstrating how culture war topics are stoked completely detatched from the reality of what is happening. It takes together a few choice quotes about "whiteness" and "color-blindness" but if you want to actually what the people who said those things mean you get linked to another article on the same site taking even more things out of context and never actually linking back to what the person meant. And if you do finally get out of the self-referential hell hole you bounce over to some article in the Telegraph which does exactly the same job of pulling out a load of out of context quotes designed to enrage their audience, since that's the job of British newspapers.

So let's trace that claim - Durham university decolonizing curriculum - link to the Telegraph and The College Fix. The College Fix appears to basically be a far right US site of very questionable quality and this article in particular doesn't have a byline. I'm a bit confused why a far right US site is reporting on British universities in the first place but ok. What does it say? It just quotes the telegraph.

Great, so the Telegraph article, it references a decolonization campaign - with a link! Let's follow the link.... Oh it's another article from the telegraph, but this time about how Jane Austen got dropped in favour of Toni Morrison at Stirling University. But it provides a link! Let's follow the link to finally get to the source of this! Oh look it's the Telgraph again, but this time it's not even journalism! It's an opinion piece!

So Durham University decolonizing maths is actually Stirling University decolonizing English, and it's not even Stirling University decolonizing English, it's actually an opinion peice in the telegraph.

But maybe I got the wrong link, let's look at the next link in the Telegraph article. Oh! It's not about Durham at all, but now it's about Oxford "decolonizing" by dropping imperial measurement units from the curriculum.

It is very telling that there is no path way from these culture war articles to the actual guidance from Durham university.

I think there's a discussion to be had about the impact of colonization and race on academia, but the basis of that conversation isn't going to start from this article.

Flamebait with little depth is flamebait

I would say “let them”.

We all know how it would turnout.

I would have liked to find the original material the article and its sources refer to, but no luck on that. Still, there's lots to criticize and clarify in the article text itself.

> The Durham University guide insists that academics need to not only consider what theories to apply but the race of the theoreticians to “decolonize” math. It does not state how a failure to do so will impact on a professor’s retention or advancement at the university.

This sentence is phrased like there are unknown consequences for disobedience, or an aura of dread and fear hanging over the campus should anyone object. However, it's also factually compatible with an alternative explanation, one I consider far more likely, which is that the proposals are entirely voluntary suggestions, and there are no actual or implied consequences for not following them. I'd love to see to original text to confirm this, since it's usually the case.

This specific article is annoyingly short on details, so I'm looking at the Telegraph source (since the other source also links back to the Telegraph). You can get around the Telegraph paywall by disabling Javascript.

Yes, this is an attempt to inject racial representation into math education. It's not really necessary, no, but it's not gonna hurt the students' education if a professor decides to do it (and since it's voluntary, they're free not to), and maybe it'll make a foreign or immigrant student's day. Overall, this is a really, really low stakes situation, to the point where the most plausible reason the Telegraph would publish the article is as culture war bait. Now for a couple of specific points.

> Staff are urged to consider giving short biographies of the mathematicians whose work they present in their modules and are encouraged to question themselves if they choose predominantly “white and/or male” figures.

In short: "Feel free to take a short tangent about the people who discovered the things your teaching, and also don't leave out the Arabic and Indian scholars." This seems like an acceptable way to try to get a room of freshmen's attention.

> Examples given include the “American version won out” of 10^9, for power of ten represented by a billion, which was different to the British 10^12.

That just seems like good information to have that not a lot of people know. It might save a history major a huge headache down the line when they're looking at old British sources.

> Giving an example for statistics modules, the guide says that Simpson’s paradox is often illustrated using survivors of the Titanic and enrolments in an American university, but an alternative that “decentres Europe” involves “the under-representation of Maori in New Zealand jury pools”.

The injection of a social issue here seems kind of awkward, but it'd work to illustrate the concept. Maybe it'd make that freshman from New Zealand pay attention today. Or maybe it won't, but it's not gonna stop them from learning about Simpson's paradox. This is a great illustration of my main point: it's pointless and might not help, but the stakes are so low that I can't imagine how someone could honestly get mad about it.

(postscript: "...a West 'confident in its values' would not be 'obsessing over pronouns...'" is a hilarious quote about a piece of guidance that, as far as I can tell, mentions neither pronouns nor gender issues.)

So, Durham University is asking professors to be racist?

Which infinity of stupidity it is equal too ?

What about cars ? Bicycles ? Rockets ? What about kalashnicov Africa is full of ? Paper is also very famously invented by ONLY ONE race ! :>

Now is time to degrade academics wihow brain usage traces.

O, btw. I think we should instantly call "brave man" anyone who has been called "homophobic" - it is sad you need to be brave to speak elemental truth.

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