Re: potential names

[Todd Trimble <trimble1@optonline.net>]

Paul Taylor wrote:

> Mathematical terminology should not employ words that are merely
> value judgements, without relevant content.

Does "equi-unstable" have enough relevant content for you?
Or do any of the proposals so far have enough relevant content
for you?  (I mean the pithy proposals contained in Joyal's list;
there is always the longer "non-invariant under equivalence".)

The quotation above seems to effectively summarize what the
rant is all about; I think I can do without the judgment or
projection that I or anyone else is taking "dictation from God".

> Let's have a bit of imagination with language, please.

Yes, let's. I look forward to other suggestions as well.

> So my suggestion is that you play around with skeletons, bones
> or even the Grim Reaper for something more suitable.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't much care for it
if it merely evokes skeletal subcategories -- that is only
one application of the concept we're discussing.

Do you have a positive contribution you'd like to make,
Paul?

Todd

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Taylor" <pt10@PaulTaylor.EU>
To: "Categories list" <categories@mta.ca>
Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2010 1:43 PM
Subject: categories: potential names


> Todd Trimble wrote:
>> Of the choices offered here, I like "precarious", "unstable", or
>> "fragile".  I just thought of "risky" myself.  Good, experienced
>> mathematicians will know when it's okay to take "risks" (and
>> will be aware of what the risks are).
>>
>> "Unstable" seems like a very sober choice, not too likely to
>> ruffle feathers.
>
> Mathematical terminology should not employ words that are merely
> value judgements, without relevant content.  It doesn't make any
> difference whether they are offensive or inoffensive value-judgement
> words.  This is not how we should choose scientific terminology.
>
> We are already cursed with vast over-use of the words "regular"
> and "normal" in mathematics.   Roughly translated, these mean
> "the objects that I want to study" - other people may have very
> good reasons for studying other kinds of objects.
>
> ("Stable" and "sober" already have several meanings.)
>
> There is a problem here in that there is nothing in the education
> of a pure mathematician that teaches how to make a professional
> judgement.   I never thought I would find myself defending
> software engineering (the religion whose creed it is that programs
> are better if their authors wear suits, draw diagrams and attend
> committee meetings) but when computer science students are subjected
> to this at least they learn that, whatever they do, they are making
> professional judgements.
>
> Since pure mathematicians do nothing similar in their training
> they are easily mis-led by the use of terminology that is based
> on value judgements.   They just think that they are taking
> dictation from God.
>
> Even if there is a very strong argument in favour of a particular
> value judgement (as there may well be in the case under discussion)
> we should still not use words that have no other content, simply
> because we will want to make OTHER value judgements in future.
>
> The English language reportedly now contains over a million words.
> Can you really not find anything in this vast thesaurus (=treasury)
> that describes the situation more appropriately and precisely?
> There is less, not more, of an excuse if you speak French, Spanish
> or another language: English allows almost completely free
> immigration of words.
>
> Let's have a bit of imagination with language, please.
>
> Despite the abuse that I received for it here, I am rather pleased
> with my introduction of the words "prone" and "supine" for the two
> different orthogonal notions to "vertical" in a fibration.
>
> A word was needed to replace "open" for an object whose terminal
> projection is an open map, since subobjects with this property
> have a habit of being closed subspaces.   The rich English
> vocabulary offered "overt", which means "explicit".   Since I first
> used this word, it has emerged that this idea is very closely related
> to recursive enumerability, ie to having an explicit presentation,
> so this has turned out to be a very good choice of word.
>
> On the other hand, I regret introducing "bilimit" and "bifinite"
> in domain theory.
>
> In the case under discussion we need to distinguish between equal
> and isomorphic objects.   In existing terminology, a category in
> which isomorphic objects are equal is called "skeletal", although
> I doubt whether this word ever gets another outing after the
> definition of a category and basic concepts therein has been
> given for the first time to students.
>
> So my suggestion is that you play around with skeletons, bones
> or even the Grim Reaper for something more suitable.
>
> Paul Taylor
>

[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]