 The scare quotes highlight the problem of trying to grasp the difference between ‘schools’, ‘styles’, ‘methodologies’ etc. (see Rowe 2003) There has been no attempt to discuss analytically the notion of ‘national style’ for the history of mathematics—in any case, nothing comparable to what Harwood 1993 does in the first chapter of his book. The situation is also complicated by the fact that different authors use different terminologies while perhaps referring to the same issue. For instance, there has been much talk recently of ‘images of mathematics’ (Corry 2004a, 2004b, Bottazzini and Dahan Dalmedico, 2001). In the last section, we shall return to reflect on these different usages of style in the historiographical literature on mathematics and how they compare with those in the natural sciences.