From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4565 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Walter Tholen Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Bourbaki and Categories Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:12:37 -0400 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1241020029 13873 80.91.229.2 (29 Apr 2009 15:47:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:47:09 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: rrosebru@mta.ca Fri Sep 12 11:43:01 2008 -0300 Return-path: Envelope-to: categories-list@mta.ca Delivery-date: Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:43:01 -0300 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1Ke9lq-0005PT-Ja for categories-list@mta.ca; Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:37:14 -0300 Original-Sender: cat-dist@mta.ca Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 35 Original-Lines: 28 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4565 Archived-At: Here is some up-lifting press about categories that I saw in an article by Karl Heinrich Hofmann entitled "Bourbaki in T"ubingen und in den USA, Erinnerungen an die franz"osische Revolution in der Mathematik", which may translate as "Bourbaki in Tubingen and in the USA, reminiscenses of the French revolution in mathematics", and which appeared in the "Mitteilungen der DMV" (the German equivalent of the AMS Notices, which is distributed to all members), vol 16.2 (2008), pp128-136. While the author has a lot of praise for Bourbaki's work, he lists also a number of "defects of the Bourbaki concept", and the following appears quite prominently in his article (my translation, okayed by the author): "Since Bourbaki is considered as the exponent of the theory of mathematical structures, it is truly surprising that the theory of categories (S. Eilenberg and S. Mac Lane, 1946) was almost demonstrably ignored as the mother of all structure theories. This was hardly sustainable in commutative algebra anymore, and the discord between Grothendieck and Bourbaki may well have been rooted in this rejection. This dismissive position is even more surprising since Eilenberg as one of the few non-French people belonged to the early Bourbaki group, and since the French founder of category theory, Charles Ehresmann, was at times closely connected with Bourbaki. In my view this failure of Bourbaki is grave."