From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/9945 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Peter May Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: "First" use of 'Category theory' to describe our field Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2019 07:58:14 -0500 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Peter May Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="21784"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" To: David Roberts , "categories@mta.ca list" Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Fri Jul 12 21:46:45 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtp2.mta.ca ([198.164.44.55]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1hm1VE-0005U1-NR for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Fri, 12 Jul 2019 21:46:44 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:34618) by smtp2.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1hm1Ux-0001lA-3H; Fri, 12 Jul 2019 16:46:27 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hm1UF-0003JI-MY for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Fri, 12 Jul 2019 16:45:43 -0300 In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:9945 Archived-At: 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/ ]