Subject: categories: re: cracks and pots

From: "Marta Bunge" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:24:25 -0500

Hi,

I thought that my intention in raising the issues that I did in my original
posting of March 12 were clear enough. Now it seems that they were not, to
some.

1.
I find ridiculous the suggestion put forward by Robert Dawson (March
23)  that my presumed "call for collective action against an entire field
of research seems uncomfortably close to an organized boycott, an extreme
breach of tradition that only an emergency -if that - could justify it".

The invention of an alleged "boycott" plot seems aimed at dismissing the
questions that I (and other concerned mathematicians who joined the
discussion) have raised. Anybody who, like Robert Dawson, resorts to such
inventions appears to be panicking in that he is trying to divert attention
from, rather than help, a healthy discussion.

2.
Eduardo Dubuc writes: "I do not agree necessarily with Marta's implicit
views". There is nothing implicit in my views. Just take a second look at my
various postings of March 14, 15, and 17 in reply to some people. If Eduardo
refers to my bringing in the Templeton Foundation into the discussion, then
I would like to add some comments, partly expanding (and correcting) my
reply to Vincent Schmitt (March 17).

I can back up my contentions in reference to the the Goedel Centenary
Symposium in Vienna

http://www.logic.at/goedel2006/

and the workshop organized by A. Connes at the Sir Isaac Newton Institue in
Cambridge (Non Commutative Algebra)

http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/programmes/NCG/ncgw02

I should, however, make more precise my reference to the Perimeter Institute
for Mathematical Physicts. What sems clear is that one of its most prominent
long-term researchers is at the same time one of the prominent particpants
in Templeton funding and activties, for instance the Foundational Questions
Institute. I quote from the last issue of Nature

http://www.fqxi.org/about.html

"Phycists to confront those big questions. Time travel, multiple universes
and extraterrestrial intelligence seem more the purview of Star Trek
scriptwriters than of serious researchers. (...) The FQI was set up last
October with a grant from the Templeton Foundation, which promotes research
at the boundary of religion and science. With US$8 million in seed money,
the FQI will fund dozens of researcher's part-time work on these questions.
(...) "I am very happy to see that a project has started to address these
needs" says Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in
Waterloo, Ontario, who is also on the FQI's scientific advisory board.  --
Geoff Brumfield. Nature.
2 March 2006."

I stated incorrectly that the Pi is devoted to String Theory, when it seems,
judging from the work of Lee Smolin, that Pi rather promotes Loop Quantum
Gravity, a competitor to String Theory. By the way, an article by Lee Smolin
entitled "Atoms of Space and Time" on LQG has been issued already three
times (with minor variations) in Scientific American (200, 2004, 2006), so
many of you must have seen it.

3.
I have never suggested that "an entire field of research" should be suspect
of constituting bad mathematics. If by this entire field of research it is
meant n-categories, theta-categories, operads, topological quantum theories,
and so on, there is, as in any other field, good and bad mathematics.
Perhaps I should bring to your attention my comments to the organizers of
the StreetFest, requested
by them of all participants, and posted in their website as

http://streetfest.maths.mq.edu.au/feedback?lastname=Bunge&firstname=Marta

I stand by this, and only hope that my remarks in the "cracks and pots"
postings have not been misinterpreted by the people mentioned in my comment
above, and by others, like Ieke Moerdijk, not mentioned in it since they
were not there.

4.
I also think that a problem persists in the emphasis given to the "you do
not want to know" general message in Baez postings, not because of them
intrinsically, or of himself, but of the use others (for what purposes, I do
not know) are making of this general trend. One instance of this trend
(although in a different casting) is the following

http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~eugenia/morality/

of a lecture that Eugenia Cheng gave in Cambridge last year.

With best wishes for (and absolute faith in) category theory,
Marta

************************************************
Marta Bunge
Professor Emerita
Dept of Mathematics and Statistics
McGill University
805 Sherbrooke St. West
Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 2K6
Office: (514) 398-3810
Home: (514) 935-3618
[email-masked]
http://www.math.mcgill.ca/bunge/
************************************************

>From: Eduardo Dubuc <[email-masked]>
>To: [email-masked]
>Subject: categories: re: cracks and pots
>Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 13:50:45 -0300 (ART)
>
>Hi
>
>To follow are the contents of two postings that Bob (always vigilant, ja!)
>thought best to concatenate in only one.
>
>On spite of Robert's erudition and his knowledgeable discourse, I still
>think Einstein using differential geometry to develop general relativity
>is not at the same level that John Baez using category theory to develop
>and/or understand string theory. His arguments are valid in a court of
>law, but do not convince me. I imagine John himself is probably the first
>to laugh at such a comparison.
>
>But this is not the issue of my present posting. He touches also some
>pertinent points that go more to the core of the "cracks_and_pots" debate.
>
>(In between ** are Robert  words)
>
>What Motl says certainly does not make people using category theory in
>string theory laugh. Applications of category theory to string (or to
>other physical theories competing with string theory ?, see Yetter's
>posting, it is all very confusing !!) may be valuable or may not. I (and a
>lot of us) can not tel.
>
>** In which case demands that they ($) be read out of the meeting are
>premature.
>($) papers that claim applications to physics **
>
>This is a difficult question.
>
>Marta was saying (and Bob Walters and others agree) that when a paper was
>claiming applications to physics it was easily accepted without
>knowledgeable and close examination, and that there were a lot of them.
>
>Probably a lot of them should be read out, but not by policy against (as
>it was erroneously interpreted in these postings). Serious refereeing is a
>healthy practice that should not be equaled with censorship.
>
>**Remember - in mathematics it's a matter of "In God We Trust,
>everybody else must provide a proof."**
>
>This is not so much so. Speculations in math are very difficult. If not
>well founded they are vacuous. Only great mathematicians can do them
>(example close to us, Grothendieck), the rest of us must provide a proof.
>
>**If the math itself meets mathematical standards of rigor, its
>application to physics need surely only meet the standards appropriate to
>that subject.**
>
>The math itself must also meet standards of quality, not only of rigor.
>Besides that, "standards appropriate to that subject" does not mean "free
>for anything". Motl writes:
>
>"I always feel very uneasy if the mathematically oriented people present
>their conjectures about physics, quantum gravity, or string theory as some
>sort of "obvious facts."
>
>Clearly he is  saying that these standards are not being fulfilled (in his
>opinion of course) by claimed applications of math to physics.
>
>Motl  may be wrong or he may be right, what we have not seen yet in these
>postings is a convincing or clear answer to the questions he arises. I
>would say, not even an answer at all.
>
>These questions triggered Marta's original posting, which in turn was
>arising other (not exactly the same) questions. I do not agree necessarily
>with Marta's implicit views, what I support is her courage to point out
>that they are serious problems in the category theory community (for
>example, quality of the publications, abuse of fashionable topics to get
>grants, invited speakers in CT meetings).
>
>Best wishes    e.d.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>