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SCIENCE AND AFRICA CHAPMAN "mind" concept cripples scientific analysis, and only when greater emphasis is put on psychological behavioral patters (in a given social context) will it be understood once and for all (this is not meant in the dogmatic sense) that the difference in psychological make-up is due, more or less, to the differences in social conditions which have nothing whatsoever to do with "mind types." Although our discussion of the evolution of counting in Africa is not very detailed we can detect a transition from empiricism to rational knowledge. A better understanding of this transition will be particularly helpful to the historian of science because it suggests how such fundamental ideas of mathematics as the idea of number, or infinity, which in their simplest forms occurred to primitive men, evolved. Our present ideas about the progress of science and the relation of science to society, except perhaps in the East, are somewhat vague. Only Marxist theoreticians seem to have any clear ideas about the interconnection between society and science. George Sarton in his work A History of Science literally admits the superior explanatory power of Dialectical Materialism; within the same breath however he says it is partial and for the love of "Truth" he advocates that the bourgeois delusion of "knowledge for knowledge's sake." These scientists are merely expressing the fact that they accept the present conditions of existence which are obviously deplorable; they are like the liberals, they decry and cry in their harmless sophisticated ways; they talk about the world, but they make no effort to change it. But the only absolute we accept is change itself, and realizing that the relation between science and society is dynamic we cannot ignore such facts as the unearthing of a primitive abacus in the Congo which dates back 8,000 years. Instead we must compare such facts with other facts pertaining to prehistoric mathematics; and in considering social and psychological factors perhaps we will come to appreciate more the importance of knowledge as a tool for increasing human weal. 245
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-09 12:49:03
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-09 12:52:10