Timeline for Is the class of power-associative binars finitely axiomatizable?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
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| Jun 10, 2020 at 14:38 | comment | added | YCor | @EmilJeřábek What makes you believe anybody wants to impose a new word? It was created and "binar" also was, as far as I understand. I don't believe anyway that some subcommunity is owner of the terminology. For sure the fact that "groupoid" was mainly used for another meaning was a good reason to create a new one. Searching MO questions with "groupoids" yields 370 answers and if I'm correct, the totality of the 50 first answers points to the "small category" meaning. The point of my anecdote is that using without notice "groupoid" in a (now) rare meaning can lead to confusion. | |
| Jun 10, 2020 at 13:06 | comment | added | Emil Jeřábek | @YCor I can't say I understand the point of your anecdote, but note that it's fairly common that the same word is used in different meanings in different fields, and if you want to read papers in some field, it sure helps to first make oneself familiar with standard terminology in that field. This is not going to be helped by Bourbaki inventing a new word and trying to impose it from outside on practitioners in the field. | |
| Jun 10, 2020 at 10:18 | comment | added | YCor | @EmilJeřábek "magma" is a respectable geologic term which is not considered there as offensive or not pejorative whatsoever, so your superlatives are somewhat exaggerated. If Bourbaki gave them a name, this means they thought it was worth a name. As regards groupoids, I remember spending hours (I don't exaggerate) trying to figure out what a groupoid on 1 generator is, before I learnt that it was just used to mean a magma (I understood it in the meaning of small category with inverses). | |
| Jun 10, 2020 at 8:44 | history | edited | Keith Kearnes | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 10, 2020 at 6:46 | comment | added | Emil Jeřábek | The m-word sounds like an awful mockery of a name whether or not it is related to Ore. Also, “something that has no interesting structure” (primordial chaos) completely misses the point: Bourbaki, in their infinite wisdom, were apparently unaware that algebraists are not so much interested in the class of all groupoids (there is not much to say about it in this generality, and what is there to say also applies to algebras in other signatures), but they usual study varieties of groupoids satisfying this or that additional identity, precisely because they do have interesting structure. | |
| Jun 10, 2020 at 5:05 | history | edited | Keith Kearnes | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 10, 2020 at 4:37 | comment | added | bof | @YCor Thanks for thi comment. Since I learned the word "magma" I intuitively thought of it as a kind of primordial chaos. I was appalled by the explanation in this answer, and I'm glad to know that it's not true. | |
| Jun 9, 2020 at 7:10 | comment | added | YCor | (...) I think we thought of "fourbi" but we rejected it. In any case it's unrelated to Ore" | |
| Jun 9, 2020 at 7:09 | comment | added | YCor | I've asked J-P. Serre about the invention of the term magma: his answer is "Il me semble que c'est Bourbaki qui a inventé ça. Autant que je souvienne, il voulait un mot qui n'ait pas été déjà utilisé en algèbre, et qui suggère quelque chose n'ayant aucune structure intéressante. Je crois que nous avions pensé à "fourbi", mais nous l'avons rejeté. En tout cas ça n'a rien à voir avec Ore." English rough translation: "I think Bourbaki invented this. As far as I know, he wanted a word not yet used in algebra, suggesting something that has no interesting structure. (...) | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 2:47 | comment | added | Gerhard Paseman | I recall remarking to George Bergman around that time that there was a previous usage, from Star Trek TNG. I think he had the idea before the conference. Gerhard "Decided Not To Use Klingon" Paseman, 2020.06.07. | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 2:41 | history | answered | Keith Kearnes | CC BY-SA 4.0 |