In this paper, I examine aspects of the methodological debate that originated in 2010, when the distinguished historian of mathematics Sabetai Unguru reviewed Roshdi Rashed’s edition of the Arabic translation of Apollonius’ Conics. In his review, Unguru criticized what Rashed calls ‘l’usage instrumental d’une autre mathématique pour commenter une oeuvre ancienne’. I consider this debate very important and will try to place it within in the discussion of the so-called ‘geometric algebra’ that goes back to the seventies, by tracing the contributions of the main figures who took part in it.

1. classics
2. historiography of mathematics
3. Philosophy

Original publication: Brigaglia, Aldo. "Remarks on the Historiography of Mathematics." Interpretatio Series A. 2020. URI: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/interpretatioa/article/view/34158. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Interpretatio under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.