Mathematics and Society

Mathematics and Society is a truly impressive piece ofscholarship-an important corrective to the groundless intellectual history of mathematics in South Asia that Sanskrit textualists have been peddling for generations. For the historian and those familiar with the historiography of colonialism and knowledge production, Senthil Babu's book presents a distinct and refreshingalternative to what the author rightly calls "feel-good" histories of science and globalization that have embraced ideas of localization, circulation, and "interconnectedness" in recent times. * Daud Ali, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Societ *
Senthil Babu's work is an important contribution to the understanding of our scientific modernity and its roots. * Pietro D. Omodeo, Nuncius *
Senthil Babu's monograph constitutes an important building block for future inquiries that can further differentiate between regional and transregional traditions of mathematics in South Asia and how they relate to those in other parts of the Indian Ocean world and beyond. At the same time, it is a welcome addition to the reading lists of those interested in the sociocultural complexities of knowledge transmission in early modern south India. * Christopher D. Bahl, The British Journal for the History of Science *
This book not only shows what happened to these practices when they were exposed to colonial revenue administration, but also explains how they were reorganized under that administration. This is a good book for understanding the social history of mathematics in the Tamil-speaking Southern Indian region. * Dipak Jadhav, MathSciNet *