Filling in the short blanks: musings on bringing the historiography of mathematics to the classroom

Abstract

Writing a history of early trigonometry brought me to confront in a practical way some difficult historiographic questions. What does it mean to know a theorem? How does one determine what belongs to trigonometry, and doesn't? To what extent can one legitimately talk about knowledge crossing cultural boundaries intact? Although these questions do not have clear answers, their introduction to a classroom setting could enrich and deepen students' perceptions of what mathematics is, and how culture interacts with it.