From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5952 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Colin McLarty Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: The humility topos Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2010 13:31:28 -0400 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Colin McLarty NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1278288683 9454 80.91.229.12 (5 Jul 2010 00:11:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 00:11:23 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Mon Jul 05 02:11:20 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 1OVZHL-0005e0-Rv for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Mon, 05 Jul 2010 02:11:20 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1OVYlA-0003Ho-KB for categories-list@mta.ca; Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:38:04 -0300 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5952 Archived-At: Yes, this is Grothendieck's stated intention, in the article "Topos" written with Verdier in SGA 4 (p. 301). But at the same time he and his friends knew well that topo, with plural topos, is ordinary French for a little speech, and is common slang for a school essay. This comes from the long-time use of "topos" as a term in rhetoric taken from Aristotle. I have not found older uses of the specific term "humility topos," but "topos" in this rhetorical sense is not postmodern. It is one of the oldest scholarly terms. Colin 2010/7/2 Steve Vickers : > I've assumed (and told people) that "topos" was a back-formation from > "topology" - that Grothendieck's intention was to imply that toposes > were the structures of which topology was truly the study. (The argument > falls into two parts: (a) to carry out topology you need sheaves and not > just opens, and (b) there are suitable categories of sheaves that don't > arise from ordinary spaces.) > > Certainly it is my own intention to stress the "generalized topological > space" nature of toposes; but is my assumption about Grothendieck's > intention actually correct? > > Steve. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]