From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/6344 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Dusko Pavlovic Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: "schizophrenic" reference Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2010 08:21:45 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Dusko Pavlovic NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1288615292 31472 80.91.229.12 (1 Nov 2010 12:41:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2010 12:41:32 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Mon Nov 01 13:41:27 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtpx.mta.ca ([138.73.1.114]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PCthW-0005mi-JX for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:41:26 +0100 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:36098) by smtpx.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1PCtgD-0002mj-Vm; Mon, 01 Nov 2010 09:40:05 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1PCtg8-0002tF-Pf for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Mon, 01 Nov 2010 09:40:00 -0300 Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:6344 Archived-At: people, can we please please please stop with these evil schizophrenic dogmatic discussions about terminology? i have been on this list for 20 years, and there were good times, and there were less good times, but i was never really tempted to start filtering it out. in the middle of the discussion about evil, and about the religious conotations pointed out by jean benabou, a lurking student asked me: why is it that category theorists have no sense of humor? i said all scientists are a little serious, but she came at me with a collection of recent terminology from chemistry: > moronic acid, arsole, bastardin and bastardane, gossypole, buckminster > fullerene... all of it in refereed publications. people enjoy themselves creating new molecules and then creating names the for them. in physics they have MACHOs and WIMPs. they have the big bang. if we want to attract more students, maybe we should use names like big bang, and like pullback, and not like l-adic p-groups, or even galoisian cohomology (especially since galois was dead <150 years when his cohomology came about...) when i say "i had a schizophrenic morning", it does not mean that my morning has seen a psychiatrist, or even that it was split in two. when i say "i had 3000 things to do", it doesn't mean that i counted. some people would prefer to say "i had many things to do". these two statements express the same fact, but they also express different speakers. the difference between such expressions is called social life. some people say that words should have a clear meaning, and that conotations (religious, moral, ironic) should be avoided. but words *always* accumulate connotations, entire mythologies, as roland barthes explained. this cannot be decreed away. the standardized, official, unambiguous expressions do not express only their standard meanings, but also the adherence to the social context in which they were standardized. the argument for standard unambiguous terminologies is usually that the public would get confused with multiple terms. the rules to be obeyed are almost always prescribed for the social benefit, and almost never to assert authority. when i was a child in yugoslavia, you could never say communism, you had to say socialism, because the difference might confuse the public. mathematical notations can be good or bad, and great mathematicians often design great notations. but natural language is a living organism. words evolve. in contrast with the mathematical notations, words do not obey intelligent design, no matter how intelligent we are... (sorry about the long rant.) if anyone is interested, i think we should form A Categorical Liberation Union to defend our terminology from moral and religious influences. -- dusko > From: Tom Leinster > Date: October 29, 2010 4:34:21 AM GMT+02:00 > To: > Subject: categories: Re: "schizophrenic" reference > Reply-To: Tom Leinster > > > I'm afraid I say this every time "schizophrenic" objects come up, but here > I go again... > > Let's not use that word. > > To quote the Guardian style guide (http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/s): > > schizophrenia, schizophrenic > > use only in a medical context, never to mean "in two minds", > contradictory, or erratic, which is wrong, as well as offensive to > people diagnosed with this illness. > > There is a concise summary of the history and terminology at > > http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/dualizing+object > > which also links to a discussion of alternatives. "Dualizing object" and > "ambimorphic object" are both used. > > Best wishes, > Tom [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]