This brings up one of my hobby-horses, that the virtues of abstraction are not marketed, even to mathematics students. After I gave a presentation to teachers and pupils on knots, including prime knots, in 1987 or so a teacher came up to me and said: "That is the first time in my mathematical career that anyone has used the term `analogy' in relation to mathematics!" Who is responsible for this? Of course *abstraction* is about *analogies*. I will comment this on the given web site, but my registration awaits approval. The word `analogy' does occur 9 times in Spivak's book, but not I think with this force. Tim and I have a paper: `Category Theory: an abstract setting for analogy and comparison', In: What is Category Theory? Advanced Studies in Mathematics and Logic, Polimetrica Publisher, Italy, (2006) 257-274. ([141] on my publication list. pdf available) The other side to category theory is that is has stimulated the development of new algebraic/mathematical structures. Ronnie On 06/06/2013 16:46, Eduardo J. Dubuc wrote:
On 05/06/13 21:28, Ross Street wrote:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/350567/description/One_of_the_mos...
Perhaps the above article is more good than harm.
Ross www.math.mq.edu.au/~street
I just read the article. It seems to me that it is empty marketing. But, anyway, marketing has been extensively used in mathematics, to witness, Thom's theory of catastrophes (hiding that there was good mathematics underneath).
e.d.
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