Re: dagger and involution

["Zinovy Diskin" <zdiskin@cs.toronto.edu>]

On 3/2/07, Robert Seely <rags@math.mcgill.ca> wrote:
>
>
> But by now, too many folks are probably unwilling to change (and there
> isn't really an obvious better name anyway), and their collegues and
> students will probably follow suit, making a name revision even less
> likely.  Pity though ...


synonyms (and even homonyms) are widely spread in natural languages simply
because they are convenient. In reasonable doses they could be useful in
math too. It would be worse if their use were implicit but if daggerists and
involutists know that they speak about the same thing, then why not?

I do not want to say that both terms are equally good, or equally bad...
what I'm trying to say is that so far we simply do not know. It will be seen
later whether the community will prefer one over the other, or will continue
to use both... Language is normally regulated by usage rather than by
directives. The current discussion is quite useful if it is about usage, but
I'm afraid that it would be less useful if it takes the modality of
prescribing one and proscribing the other.

--zd