From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5355 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Zinovy Diskin Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: A well kept secret Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:00:20 -0500 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Zinovy Diskin NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1260649955 4616 80.91.229.12 (12 Dec 2009 20:32:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:32:35 +0000 (UTC) To: Paul Taylor , categories list Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Sat Dec 12 21:32:27 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NJYdd-0000z0-Eu for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:32:25 +0100 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1NJYEw-0007Kq-Qw for categories-list@mta.ca; Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:06:54 -0400 In-Reply-To: Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5355 Archived-At: On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Paul Taylor wrote: > The fact is that category theory alienated the rest of the mathematical > world. =C2=A0 Since the damage had been done in the 1970s, well before my > time, > I have never managed to work out how this happenned, or who was > responsible. > Had it been really *done*? It may be just in "the nature of things" when a community A provides abstract models for community B. Something similar appears in relations between physicists and mathematicians, or between physicists/computer scientists and engineers. When a mathematician is building a math model for some physical theory, his main driving force is a question "What do they *really* do?" As the work is progressing, the question develops into a thesis "they don't actually understand what they do", and with this attitude, the mathematician finally brings something structurally neat to physicists. In a typical good case, the reaction would be like Manin recently formulated in his interview "we always knew that but thank you for attention". In a bad case, ... you know. Isn't it similar to the math vs.category theory case? For some people structural clarity and elegance is a matter of life and death, for others it's a dispensable luxury (it's a rephrasing of Edsger Dijkstra if I remember right). zd [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]