In addition to all the deeper reasons, `pointless’ can be taken to be derogatory, so preferably it should be used only when in tongue-in-cheek mode. At least that’s what I tell my students — just as I ask them not to say `abstract nonsense’ too enthusiastically… :) Pedro
On Jan 21, 2023, at 7:42 PM, ptj@maths.cam.ac.uk wrote:
I was wondering how long it would be before someone in this thread referred to my `point of pointless topology' paper! Perhaps not so many people know that the title was a conscious echo of an earlier paper by Mike Barr called `The point of the empty set', which began with the words (I quote from memory) `The point is, there isn't any point there; that's exactly the point'.
As Steve says, to fit that title I had to use the word `pointless', but on the whole I prefer `pointfree'; it carries the implication that you are free to work without points or to use them (in a generalized sense), as you prefer.
Peter Johnstone
On Jan 21 2023, Steven Vickers wrote:
Dear David,
Yes, and it's an excellent paper with a witty title for which only "pointless" would do.
I particularly like what Peter said when explaining the significant difference in the absence of choice (such as in toposes of sheaves), and that "usually it is locales, not spaces, which provide the right context in which to do topology".
He went on to say,
"This is the point which ... Andre Joyal began to hammer home in the early 1970s; I can well remember how, at the time, his insistence that locales were the real stuff of topology, and spaces were merely figments of the classical mathematician's imagination, seemed (to me, and I suspect to others) like unmotivated fanaticism. I have learned better since then."
This is all part of the argument for using a reformed topology, but there is nothing particular there about the pointwise style of reasoning for it. Hence we are still left with the question of how to reference the two concepts, the reformed topology and the reasoning without points.
Would you call Ng's paper with me pointless? Points are everywhere in it. (Of course, there's the separate issue of whether it was pointless in the sense of not worth the trouble. But an important feature of the style is that it forces you to be careful to distinguish between Dedekind reals and 1-sided (lower or upper) reals, and in Ng's thesis this uncovered unexpected roles of 1-sided reals in the account of Ostrowski's Theorem and the Berkovich spectrum. So there is a bit of payoff.)
Best wishes,
Steve.
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