Over the first decades of the 20th century, French philosopher and sociologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl developed the theory of a “prelogical mentality”, which he attributed to members of “inferior/primitive” societies. In particular, he argued that these peoples had a lesser ability to abstract and generalize, and that their way of thinking was not governed by the same logical principles than ours. This chapter aims at evaluating to what extent this theory of a “prelogical mentality” has significantly influenced scholarly discussions/studies in the field of history and philosophy of science (Léon Brunschvicg, Abel Rey…), when comparing—between “civilizations”—the emergence/development of “science” and of mathematics in particular. Keywords: L. Lévy-Bruhl, prelogical mentality, L. Brunschvicg, A. Rey, mathematics, logic, abstraction, numeracy