Subject: categories: Who said: General Abstract Nonsense

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 08:00:58 +0000

Hi -

who coined the expression
   General Abstract Nonsense
as a synonym for category theory? 
Where did it first appear in print?

Thanks for any comments.

Bodo

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Prof. Dr. Bodo Pareigis
Dept.of Mathematics, University of Munich
Theresienstr. 39, D-80333 Muenchen, GERMANY
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     Email: [email-masked]
     Web: http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~pareigis
     phone: office: +49 89-2394-4426

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From: "Tim Heap" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 18:34:33 +0100

pareigis  writes:

Bodo> Hi - who coined the expression
Bodo>    General Abstract Nonsense
Bodo> as a synonym for category theory?  Where did it first appear in
Bodo> print?

Lang, in his book `Algebra' says:
	"The terminology is due to Steenrod."

	tim

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From: Michael Barr <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 18:43:26 -0400 (EDT)

This is interesting if indeed it was due to Steenrod.  In that case, it
was certainly not intended as a putdown (as Lang clearly intended it).
Sammy Eilenberg told on a number of occasions the story that when General
Theory of Natural Equivalences was published, Steenrod said that no paper
had ever influenced his thinking more.  He had been searching for years
for an axiomatization of homology theory, but had never thought of using
the induced homomorphisms as the basic tool.  The result was, of course,
the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms.  (The rest of the story is that P.A. Smith
said he never read a more trivial paper in his life.  Sammy commented that
both reactions were valid.)