From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5947 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Dusko Pavlovic Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: The humility topos Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:15:26 -0700 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Dusko Pavlovic NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1081) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1278033229 18015 80.91.229.12 (2 Jul 2010 01:13:49 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 01:13:49 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Categories list To: Michael Barr Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Fri Jul 02 03:13:47 2010 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 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OUUp7-0001Na-BC for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Fri, 02 Jul 2010 03:13:45 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1OUUP8-0004pB-Ie for categories-list@mta.ca; Thu, 01 Jul 2010 21:46:54 -0300 In-Reply-To: Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5947 Archived-At: It might be fair to remember that "Topoi" is the title of 6th book or = Aristotle's Organon. "On Categories" is the title of the 1st book of = Organon.=20 Both concepts were very actively used by scolastic philosophers. Maybe = we are their heirs of some sort ;) It would be interesting to know about the motivations of people who = introduced these terms into mathematics. I think that MacLane said at = one point that there was a terminological link through Rudolf Carnap, = thus through neokantians. The notion of categories plays a prominent = role in Kant's first Critique. But it is even more interesting if the = term topos was introduced with an intentional reference to *dialectics*, = which is what that part of Organon is about. -- dusko On Jun 28, 2010, at 12:49 PM, Michael Barr wrote: > Yesterday's NY Times magazine had an article about the British > experimental novelist David Mitchell. Mitchell told a story to the = author > of the article about how, after an event in New Zealand a woman, a > medievalist there asked him if knew about the humility topos. I = imagine > that Mitchell came across as very humble. At any rate she went on to = say, > and I quote because I am not certain how to parse it, "in the medieval = era > humility was seen as a great virtue. The humility topos was used for > those abbots...who were actually monsters of arrogance, but were = always > banging on about how humble they were...". The woman said to him, = "Watch > out for the humility topos" and then disappeared. >=20 > Aside from wanting to know what was meant here, should the first quote > have put humility topos in quotes, for example, I would also like to = know > what is the subobject classifier of the humility topos. >=20 > Michael [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]