Last Wednesday Giants & Dwarfs, who describe themselves as "A Blog on Academia and "Culture" (thanks for the email introducing yourselves gentlemen), had this tantalising report, tantalising because the link embedded in it went to something entirely different:

THE NEXT STEP into madness. The University of Hawaii at Hilo has been awarded a $2.5 million grant by the National Science Foundation, which will be used in part to teach "ethnomathematics" (everyone knows 1+1 doesn't equal 2 if you're of Hawaiian-American extraction).

Anyone know anything about this? It may not be as mad as G&D make it sound, but it does indeed sound decidedly unmathematical. I have never forgotten being told by the Professor of Maths at Essex University several decades ago that mathematics is the study of what everyone is compelled to agree about, regardless of race, colour or creed. And it's surely true that maths is that, even if that definition might be said to include some other things besides. Maths is a huge and expanding clutch of statements of the form "if this is true and this is true then it must follow that this also is true". If you're a Martian, never mind a Hawaiian, you may not get this or that bit of maths, but if the mathematicians have done their stuff right, you can't deny it. It says something very revealing about maths that when humans are trying to strike up relationships with aliens, by including messages in those rockets they fire off into the wild black yonder, they always include mathematical messages.

If all that "ethnomathematics" says is that the language in which the universally true statements of mathematics are expressed may be somewhat culture bound, then fine. But I suspect it of saying something more, something untrue. Comments are always welcome (and thanks very much for all the comments on postings here so far) but on this matter especially so.