"schizophrenic" reference
At the Halifax Octoberfest just ended, I had mistakenly, in a private conversation, suggested looking in or near Chapter 4 section 5 of PTJ's Stone Spaces for occurrence of the word "schizophrenic." I regret that error. Better places to look might be page 268 of that book, or passim on pages 254-262, and thereabouts. Grosso modo: not Chapter 4 section 5, but Chapter 6 section 4. Cheers, -- Fred [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
I don't claim credit (if that's the right word) for introducing this use of "schizophrenic". I got it from an early draft of Harold Simmons's paper "A couple of triples" -- though Harold changed his terminology before the published version appeared (Topology Appl. 13, 1982). In "Sheaves in Geometry and Logic" (p. 280), Mac Lane and Moerdijk credit John Isbell with having introduced the term, but I don't know of any publication where John used it. Peter Johnstone On Wed, 27 Oct 2010, Fred E.J. Linton wrote:
At the Halifax Octoberfest just ended, I had mistakenly, in a private conversation, suggested looking in or near Chapter 4 section 5 of PTJ's Stone Spaces for occurrence of the word "schizophrenic." I regret that error. Better places to look might be page 268 of that book, or passim on pages 254-262, and thereabouts. Grosso modo: not Chapter 4 section 5, but Chapter 6 section 4.
Cheers, -- Fred
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 05:14:24 AM EDT Prof. Peter Johnstone <P.T.Johnstone@dpmms.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
... I don't claim credit (if that's the right word) for introducing this use of "schizophrenic". I got it from ...
I wasn't aiming for an attribution of credit -- only for a citation of use of the term in the accessible literature. Certainly I have, over the years, heard at least Isbell and Lawvere -- and others -- refer to schizophrenic objects, schizoid objects, objects with "split" -- or "multiple", or "more than one" -- personality, and the like. How far back, "over the years"? -- Probably at least to the early 'seventies, quite possibly earlier. Cheers, -- Fred [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
I'm afraid I say this every time "schizophrenic" objects come up, but here I go again... Let's not use that word. To quote the Guardian style guide (http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/s): schizophrenia, schizophrenic use only in a medical context, never to mean "in two minds", contradictory, or erratic, which is wrong, as well as offensive to people diagnosed with this illness. There is a concise summary of the history and terminology at http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/dualizing+object which also links to a discussion of alternatives. "Dualizing object" and "ambimorphic object" are both used. Best wishes, Tom On Thu, 28 Oct 2010, Fred E.J. Linton wrote:
On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 05:14:24 AM EDT Prof. Peter Johnstone <P.T.Johnstone@dpmms.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
... I don't claim credit (if that's the right word) for introducing this use of "schizophrenic". I got it from ...
I wasn't aiming for an attribution of credit -- only for a citation of use of the term in the accessible literature.
Certainly I have, over the years, heard at least Isbell and Lawvere -- and others -- refer to schizophrenic objects, schizoid objects, objects with "split" -- or "multiple", or "more than one" -- personality, and the like.
How far back, "over the years"? -- Probably at least to the early 'seventies, quite possibly earlier.
Cheers, -- Fred
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
people, can we please please please stop with these evil schizophrenic dogmatic discussions about terminology? i have been on this list for 20 years, and there were good times, and there were less good times, but i was never really tempted to start filtering it out. in the middle of the discussion about evil, and about the religious conotations pointed out by jean benabou, a lurking student asked me: why is it that category theorists have no sense of humor? i said all scientists are a little serious, but she came at me with a collection of recent terminology from chemistry:
moronic acid, arsole, bastardin and bastardane, gossypole, buckminster fullerene...
all of it in refereed publications. people enjoy themselves creating new molecules and then creating names the for them. in physics they have MACHOs and WIMPs. they have the big bang. if we want to attract more students, maybe we should use names like big bang, and like pullback, and not like l-adic p-groups, or even galoisian cohomology (especially since galois was dead <150 years when his cohomology came about...) when i say "i had a schizophrenic morning", it does not mean that my morning has seen a psychiatrist, or even that it was split in two. when i say "i had 3000 things to do", it doesn't mean that i counted. some people would prefer to say "i had many things to do". these two statements express the same fact, but they also express different speakers. the difference between such expressions is called social life. some people say that words should have a clear meaning, and that conotations (religious, moral, ironic) should be avoided. but words *always* accumulate connotations, entire mythologies, as roland barthes explained. this cannot be decreed away. the standardized, official, unambiguous expressions do not express only their standard meanings, but also the adherence to the social context in which they were standardized. the argument for standard unambiguous terminologies is usually that the public would get confused with multiple terms. the rules to be obeyed are almost always prescribed for the social benefit, and almost never to assert authority. when i was a child in yugoslavia, you could never say communism, you had to say socialism, because the difference might confuse the public. mathematical notations can be good or bad, and great mathematicians often design great notations. but natural language is a living organism. words evolve. in contrast with the mathematical notations, words do not obey intelligent design, no matter how intelligent we are... (sorry about the long rant.) if anyone is interested, i think we should form A Categorical Liberation Union to defend our terminology from moral and religious influences. -- dusko
From: Tom Leinster <Tom.Leinster@glasgow.ac.uk> Date: October 29, 2010 4:34:21 AM GMT+02:00 To: <categories@mta.ca> Subject: categories: Re: "schizophrenic" reference Reply-To: Tom Leinster <Tom.Leinster@glasgow.ac.uk>
I'm afraid I say this every time "schizophrenic" objects come up, but here I go again...
Let's not use that word.
To quote the Guardian style guide (http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/s):
schizophrenia, schizophrenic
use only in a medical context, never to mean "in two minds", contradictory, or erratic, which is wrong, as well as offensive to people diagnosed with this illness.
There is a concise summary of the history and terminology at
http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/dualizing+object
which also links to a discussion of alternatives. "Dualizing object" and "ambimorphic object" are both used.
Best wishes, Tom
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
On 10/28/2010 7:34 PM, Tom Leinster wrote:
I'm afraid I say this every time "schizophrenic" objects come up, but here I go again...
Let's not use that word.
I have to agree with Tom here because to deny this would offend those upset by Holocaust deniers (which we all should be upset by). This comes up repeatedly in the politics of global warming, where people complain on that basis about the use of the term "climate denier." Sensitivity is chopping holes in the English language the way mad cow disease chops holes in the brain, obliging us to replace "he" by "he or she" (awkward) or "they" (ungrammatical), maintain an up-to-the-minute lexicon of who's allowed to call which groups by what names, keep track of which punishments are meted out to which groups for insulting which icons, and so on. I'm not saying sensitivity should or shouldn't do this, I'm just pointing out that it's happening. Nature does not judge BSE as good or bad, however badly done by its victims might feel. This might not be the best time to advertise my paper "Communes via Yoneda, from an Elementary Perspective," Fundamenta Informaticae 123 (2010) 1–16, DOI 10.3233/FI-2010-315, which (at long last) is the journal version of my CT'04 talk in Vancouver. That's because I speak there about "the schizophrenic mind-body nature of Lewis's qualia" which I explicate in terms of the dual nature of the elements of the dualizing object and the states (functionals, open sets, dual points, intensive quantities) of the tensor unit as the dual of the dualizing object in *-autonomous categories, and the generalization thereof via profunctors to commune categories. The "schizophrenia" is analyzed in terms of the two kinds of entities belonging to the same homsets. All rubbish of course, but hopefully to emerge from that status at some point. Vaughan [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
participants (5)
-
Dusko Pavlovic -
Fred E.J. Linton -
Prof. Peter Johnstone -
Tom Leinster -
Vaughan Pratt