Re: "First" use of 'Category theory' to describe our field

[Peter May <may@math.uchicago.edu>]

For Saunders, the terminology of category theory came from Kant.?? From
Wikipedia:

In Kant's philosophy, a category (German: Categorie in the original or
Kategorie in modern German) is a *pure concept of the understanding
(Verstand)*.

Etc.?? It may be relevant that Saunders was very influenced by his time
at Gottingen.
In any case, the term category theory was second nature to him. Although
that was well before my time, I'm quite sure he used the term pretty
much from the beginning.

On 7/10/19 7:01 AM, David Roberts wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> the (idle) question is: when did the phrase 'category theory' catch on
> for the field? Clearly it didn't leap from either of the heads of
> Eilenberg or Mac Lane full-grown, since they used the phrase 'General
> theory of natural equivalences'. There are the old 'Reports of the
> Midwest Category Seminar' lecture notes (the first in 1967), which
> hints that 'category theory' wasn't quite the name in use.
>
> Even more interesting: who was the first "category theorist", by that name?
>
> Answers referring to verifiable sources would be best.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> David
>
>
>

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