Rahul Roy is at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.

A difference between fancy and fact is that fancies may be as you please but facts are as the universe pleases.
\/ Robert Kaplan, The Nothing that is -- A natural history of zero.

An irksome feature in the study of the history of science, mathematics, and society formation is encountering `Eurocentrism' at practically every level. The notion that everything `civilised' originated in Europe is an enterprise which began around two hundred years ago, at a time when the world was divided into the `dark' continents and their `enlightened' colonial masters. Besides strengthening the view that the `dark' continents were indeed pitch dark, Eurocentrism was a reflex of the colonizers quest for legitimacy as the font of all things civilised. Many sociologists find in this Eurocentrism the seed which later bore the bitter fruit of Hitler's Aryan supremacy theory. Lately, however, historians cutting across the North-South and East-West divides have come to realize the folly of Eurocentrism and the ways it has hindered the development and a critical study of history, be it of science or otherwise

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Address for Correspondence

Rahul Roy
Indian Statistical Institute
New Delhi 110 016, India