From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5391 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: jim stasheff Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: RE: A well kept secret? Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:47:56 -0500 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: jim stasheff NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.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 1261356774 24181 80.91.229.12 (21 Dec 2009 00:52:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:52:54 +0000 (UTC) To: Larry Harper , categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Mon Dec 21 01:52:47 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 1NMWVz-0003GH-1v for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:52:47 +0100 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1NMW3K-0002lu-Kh for categories-list@mta.ca; Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:23:10 -0400 In-Reply-To: Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5391 Archived-At: This seems like an excellent advertisement of `thinking categorically' and not necessarily writing in that dialect. jim Larry Harper wrote: > Dear All, > > > > As one of MacLane's working mathematicians who follows the catlist, I would > like to add some thoughts about perceptions of category theory (CT). I > earned a Bachelor's in Physics at Berkeley in 1960 and went to grad school > in Mathematics at the University of Oregon the following fall. In Frank > Anderson's graduate algebra course I was first exposed to CT and hated it. > My background and ability in algebra were marginal anyway and to have my > first definition of tensor product be in terms of commuting diagrams was > disastrous. Fortunately, I got a summer job at the Jet Propulsion Lab and > one of my coworkers, Gus Solomon, gave me the classical constructive > definition of tensor products. Sammy Eilenberg came by Eugene and gave a > lecture on CT which did nothing to change my opinion of it. When I heard of > Serge Langs's characterization of CT as "abstract nonsense" it reinforced > what I already thought (See however, > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_nonsense > > which does not mention Serge Lang in the body of the article). > > > ... [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]