2010/7/6 Graham White <graham@eecs.qmul.ac.uk>: Raises a very on-point question about Grothendieck's choice of the word "topos":
One of the most interesting things about the term, at any rate in Greek, is that it thus has both logical and geometrical meanings, and that from very early. I can't help wondering whether Grothendieck had that in mind: he seems to have read widely enough for that to occur to him.
It is not likely that Grothendieck was thinking much of Aristotle. He probably was thinking of the common French phrase "tu vois le topo." In crude translation "you see the topos." It actually means "you see the point" or " you know what I am talking about." Grothendieck's goal for topos theory was to explicate, and systematize, and vastly generalize a lot of routine arguments, that had become "commonplaces" in many different uses of cohomology -- so that as soon as you "see the topos" you know the outline of the situation. Then you only need to occupy yourself with a few relevant particulars to solve a particular problem. best, Colin [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]