Th e logical Greek versus the imaginative Oriental 291
distinguishing feature between pre-scientifi c and scientifi c mathemat-
ics;^60 but Indian mathematics, although categorized under the ‘scientifi c’
genus by all historians of mathematics, featured only primitive, indeed
pre-scientifi c, kinds of proofs. Th is is an apparent paradox. Had ‘Oriental’
mathematics a special status? Tannery certainly perceived it this way. In
fact, he and his colleagues were convinced that no civilization other than
the Greek ever attained the scientifi c level autonomously. Th us, the pre-
scientifi c mathematics of India only became scientifi c aft er it had been
nurtured by Greek infl uence. Indian mathematics, however, remained
stigmatized with a special and incomplete status of scientifi city, because it
had only imperfectly assimilated the Greek model.
Concluding remarks
Nineteenth-century historians of mathematics did not claim the practice
of demonstration only for the Greeks, but they insisted on its character of
exception in ‘Oriental’ mathematics. (Consequently, much of twentieth-
century historiography simply disregarded the evidence already available,
and returned to the simplifi ed view that a concern for proof and rigour
never existed outside of ancient Greece and modern Europe – perhaps
with the exception of medieval Islam.) Th e criterion that really allowed a
separation of ‘Western’ from ‘non-Western’ science was one of style : sys-
tematic and axiomatic–deductive in one case, intuitive (at best inductive),
illustrative and unrefl ected in the other. 61 Th e ideology associated with this
fundamental separation, even though its roots could be traced back to the
Renaissance, did not crystallize until late in the nineteenth century. I will
now conclude with a short sketch of the ideological landscape that favoured
its dogmatic formulation.
With the accomplishment of the imperialist enterprise and the general
confi dence that space, people and nature could be successfully domi-
nated, Western Europeans acquired the ultimate certainty of their supe-
riority over the rest of the world. It is no wonder, then, that the Romantic
and Orientalist enthusiasm, omnipresent in the fi rst half of the century,
was quickly annihilated. Dismissing previous attempts to proclaim the
originality of ‘Oriental’ science and consolidating the integrity of ‘Western’
60 Tannery 1950 : x 25.
61 Th is idea is still common today; a massive argumentation in favour of the distinctiveness of
the Western scientifi c style can be found in Crombie 1994. For a critical view, see Hart 1999.