From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/2980 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eduardo Dubuc Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: terminology Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 11:59:15 -0300 (ART) Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1241019019 6723 80.91.229.2 (29 Apr 2009 15:30:19 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:30:19 +0000 (UTC) Cc: categories@mta.ca (Categories) To: edubuc@dm.uba.ar (Eduardo Dubuc) Original-X-From: rrosebru@mta.ca Wed Jan 4 20:02:49 2006 -0400 Return-path: Envelope-to: categories-list@mta.ca Delivery-date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 20:02:49 -0400 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.52) id 1EuIV6-0003m1-T2 for categories-list@mta.ca; Wed, 04 Jan 2006 19:57:04 -0400 In-Reply-To: from "Eduardo Dubuc" at Dec 29, 2005 08:17:36 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] Original-Sender: cat-dist@mta.ca Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 6 Original-Lines: 36 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:2980 Archived-At: I have been asked why I reacted to the intended reeplacement of the names "cartesian and cocartesian" by "prone and supine". I have given several reasons, but the one underlying the whole issue is the following: The reason is that since a long time I have been worried about the ghetto (in the sense of being isolated from the rest) characteristic of a certain category theory community (or group of people). And P. May has reacted concerning "prone and supine" probably because of reasons related to this. The mathematical community have been using "cartesian and cocartesian" since always, and the introduction of "prone and supine" inside this group will confirm even more the isolation. Examples abound, see M.Barr introduction of "Molecular topos" to replace Grothendieck's "Locally connected topos". No matter how many linguistic points in favor a given name may have (like prone and supine), to replace a well stablished name intoduced by a great mathematician (or school of mathematics) only puts you in ridiculous. P. May probably was feeling somehow that this will be extended by the mathematical community to all category theory practicioners. I profit by this mail to mention that concerning the concept "final" and "initial", I am happy (and not surprised) to learn that these words have been used since a long time to indicate the same categorical concept that myself, and will certainly refer to the indicated bibliography to further justify my use of these words.