Science and an African Logic - Tapa dura

Helen Verran taught at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, between 1979 and 1986. She is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne.

Does 2 + 2 = 4? Ask almost anyone and the answer will be an unequivocal yes. A basic equation such as this seems the very definition of certainty, but how is this so?

In this captivating book, Helen Verran addresses precisely that question by looking at how science, mathematics, and logic come to life in Yoruba primary schools. Drawing on her experience as a teacher in Nigeria, Verran describes how she went from the radical conclusion that logic and math are culturally relative, to determining what Westerners find so disconcerting about Yoruba logic and to a new understanding of all generalizing logic. She reveals that in contrast to the one-to-many model found in Western number systems, Yoruba thinking operates by figuring things as wholes and their parts. Quantity is not absolute but always relational. Certainty derives not from abstract logic, but from cultural practice and association.

A powerful story of how one woman's investigation into an everyday African situation led to extraordinary conclusions about the nature of numbers, generalization, and certainty, this book will be a signal contribution to philosophy, anthropology of science, and education.