Ten ‘laws’ concerning patterns of change in the history of mathematics (1975)*

Abstract

Abstract Approximately a decade ago G. Buchdahl (1965, p. 69) stated that ‘we are finding ourselves at present in a revolution in the historiography of science’. No one has announced a revolution in the historiography of mathematics, even though the number of excellent historical studies of mathematics ha increased of late. Whereas the present state of the historiography or mathematics differs little (except in quality) from what it was nearly a century ago when Moritz Cantor published the first volume of his Vorlesungen, the historiography of science has undergone far-reaching changes which are most explicitly set out in the writings of such authors as J. Agassi and T. Kuhn (whose books Buchdahl was reviewing) as well as in the publications of N. R. Hanson, K. Popper, and S. Toulmin.