Timeline for Are higher categories useful?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
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| Dec 8, 2011 at 20:53 | history | edited | Tim Porter | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 8, 2011 at 20:51 | comment | added | Tim Porter | I forgot another point worth making. Economists claim parts of mathematics as being economics as it is useful to them, and everyone accepts that mathematics cannot be useful. I fear that there may be some mathematicians who declaim that 'X is not useful' as it is not yet useful to them who are working in subject Y, but if X becomes applicable to Y, X will become subsummed into Y and can then be accepted as being useful. I therefore do not like 'useful' as it is not a well defined term. Chris's question is, however, one that does get asked frequently. (Sorry to go on about this a bit!) | |
| Dec 8, 2011 at 20:44 | comment | added | Tim Porter | @Yemon mathematics is too big and important to be cut up and divided into little (vulnerable) pieces! | |
| Dec 8, 2011 at 20:44 | comment | added | Tim Porter | @Yemon I do not object to Chris's phrasing at all since he is merely reflecting other peoples' blindness to some overall unity of mathematics. My department was shut in Bangor however because some people play these silly games of divide and rule and of putting things into boxes. It is necessary to write within 'interest groups' when writing papers of course, but don't always stick to the demarcation set down by others. The great thing about category theory journals, for instance, is that there is a very wide range of interests represented in the papers that appear in them. | |
| Dec 8, 2011 at 19:22 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | While, like Tim, I am not a fan of putting up barriers, I don't think us younger folk can be blamed for working within the fences that were there before us and which we don't yet have the means to dismantle... (Which is to say: I don't find Chris's phrasing so objectionable.) | |
| Dec 8, 2011 at 19:04 | history | answered | Tim Porter | CC BY-SA 3.0 |