From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/6195 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Joyal=2C_Andr=E9?= Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: are fibrations evil? Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 14:21:57 -0400 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Joyal=2C_Andr=E9?= NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1284998430 15889 80.91.229.12 (20 Sep 2010 16:00:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:00:30 +0000 (UTC) Cc: "John Baez" , "categories" To: "David Yetter" Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Mon Sep 20 18:00:29 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtpy.mta.ca ([138.73.1.139]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Oxin5-0000Su-Ob for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:00:27 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:59082) by smtpy.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Oxilz-00008e-Tm; Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:59:20 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Oxilu-0005NF-Eh for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:59:14 -0300 Thread-Index: ActYDHNIABVgWtGTT4utgAxRYZb0BQAFujLW Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:6195 Archived-At: Dear David, I appreciate your view. I would love to have the dictatorial power to reform=20 the mathematical vocabulary. I dream of kicking out long words like diffeomorphism and homeomorphism. I guess that if they have persisted in mathematics, it is because everybody understand them. It is very difficult to impose a new terminology. There is a social aspect to the problem. Even if small group of peoples agree in using a new terminology, this may have little influence on the larger = community. The new word may become a tag for identifying the members of a group. It may enclose its user into a sub-culture. Best, andr=E9 -------- Message d'origine-------- De: David Yetter [mailto:dyetter@math.ksu.edu] Date: dim. 19/09/2010 10:57 =C0: Joyal, Andr=E9 Cc: John Baez; categories Objet : Re: categories: Re: are fibrations evil? =20 Dear Andre: Brevity is the usual reason for introducing new terminology. And, ultimately there is a need, as mathematics would grind to a halt if one had to write out a phrase giving the content of each concept whenever one wanted to talk about it. One may object to the jocular use of a word with a moral denotation as the name for a mathematical concept, but four=20 characters beats 28 characters (or 31 if one counts spaces). It certainly seems desirable to have a brief name for either "invariant under equivalence" or "not invariant under=20 equivalence". Best Thoughts, David Y. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]