From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5964 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Graham White Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: The humility topos Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:29:38 +0100 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Graham White NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1278510093 29909 80.91.229.12 (7 Jul 2010 13:41:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2010 13:41:33 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Categories list To: Vaughan Pratt Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Wed Jul 07 15:41:29 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 1OWUsQ-0000on-Dl for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:41:26 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1OWUHg-0001e1-Hg for categories-list@mta.ca; Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:03:28 -0300 In-Reply-To: Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5964 Archived-At: [Note, with humility, from moderator: this discussion has been allowed to continue off-topic too long already... let's end it, thanks.] Well, topos may not be a common English word until then, but=20 "common place" is, and that is an English translation of topos, used for the same meaning, and derived from the rhetorical tradition.=20 Melanchton's late sixteenth century textbook of theology, for example, was called Loci Communes (=3D common places in Latin). I think that=20 the non-occurrence of topos in English probably says more about the relative infrequency of Greek terms and the greater frequency of their Latin equivalents (I haven't got an OED to hand, but it would be interesting to see if locus was ever used in that sense, and how early).=20 Not only does the word topos occur in Aristotle's rhetoric,=20 but he wrote a book on topoi, which is one of his logical works.=20 One of the most interesting things about the term, at any rate in Greek, is that it thus has both logical and geometrical meanings, and that from very early. I can't help wondering whether Grothendieck had that in mind: he seems to have read widely enough for that to occur to him.=20 Graham On Mon, 2010-07-05 at 13:20 -0700, Vaughan Pratt wrote: > One would suppose that the notions of literary topos and humility topos=20 > were of ancient origin. Certainly "topos" appears in Aristotle's=20 > Rhetoric in the original Greek. However its entry into the academic=20 > lexicon as an English word relevant to rhetoric and other literary forms=20 > would seem, as far as I've been able to tell, to have occurred at some=20 > point in the 20th century. >=20 > 1. Volume Ti-Tz of the OED does not contain the word "topos," nor does=20 > it appear under the entries for "humility" or "literary." (Ordinarily=20 > the OED can relied on to record just about every English word that has=20 > appeared in print prior to the 20th century.) >=20 > 2. Adams Sherman Hill, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in=20 > Harvard University from 1876 to 1904, wrote "The Foundations of=20 > Rhetoric" in 1892 with no mention of the concept of topos as a notion in=20 > rhetoric. >=20 > The Wikipedia article on Ernst Robert Curtius at >=20 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Robert_Curtius >=20 > says "He is best known for his 1948 work Europ=C3=A4ische Literatur und=20 > Lateinisches Mittelalter. It was a major study of the Medieval Latin=20 > literature and its effect on subsequent writing in modern European=20 > languages. The book was largely responsible for introducing the literary=20 > topos concept as a scholarly and critical discussion of literary=20 > commonplaces." >=20 > So unless someone comes up with an earlier use, it looks like 1948 may=20 > be the date, and German the language, of the first appearance of "topos"=20 > outside the original Greek of Aristotle. >=20 > Vaughan Pratt [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]