> They have a false picture of the history of math that makes it seem as if a huge chunk of the most important mathematical concepts were discovered exclusively

> They have a false picture of the history of math that makes it seem as if a huge chunk of the most important mathematical concepts were discovered exclusively by Western mathematicians. Can you describe the "right picture" of mathematics? Where would Real Analysis be without Newton, Leibniz, Cauchy, Weierstrass, etc.? Where would Set Theory be without Cantor, Zermelo and Fraenkel? Where would logic be without Russel, Tarski and Gödel? Where would computability theory (and thus, computers) be without Turing, Church and von Neumann? ... and so on Unless you can find evidence that all these fields were independently studied elsewhere, or that those fields aren't important (tough sell), I will have to continue to believe that a large part of what is today's mathematics did originate in the West. That doesn't make the West "superior" (or deny the fact that, during certain periods, Europe was an intellectual backwater compared to other areas), but it's just how history went.