Subject: categories: Re: cracks and pots

From: "Robert J. MacG. Dawson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 10:54:38 -0400

Eduardo wrote:

> Well, Einstein was not "trying to", he was using it, and presented this
> use as an accomplished fact.

	He didn't just wake up one morning with the whole thing in finished
form.  Moreover, it was some time before it was experimentally verified;
some details, such as the presence or absence of a cosmological
constant, took some time to settle; some predictions (black holes,  Big
Bang) were not generally accepted for some time;  and even now it is
known *not* to be a good description of the universe at a very small scale.

> Also, you forgot to mention that he flunk a high-school exam or something
> of the sort proving by this very fact that a lot of people were stupid,
> just as they are those which have doubts about the real value of some
> applications of category theory to physics !

	I did not "forget" to, it never occurred to me to do so, for two good
reasons.

  	Firstly, I don't see the relevance.  Are you suggesting that

(1) Einstein must have been stupid to flunk an exam, or that

(2) his teacher and N-1 unspecified others were stupid because

	(2a) an exam was set that Einstein could flunk, or
	(2b) Einstein having flunked the exam, they did not recognize his
future genius & change the grade?

	None of these conclusions seem justified to me... as my records   at
Dalhousie and Cambridge will show,   people can flunk exams on bad days;
I don't *think* I'm stupid, and I know the instructors who set the exams
were not.

    But, secondly and more to the point, recent research suggests that
the story of Einstein's failing grades is apocryphal. What seems to have
happened is that  his school changed over from a grading scheme with 1
high and 6 low to one with 6 high and 1 low, and a surviving report card
had been misinterpreted.  See for instance:

	http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1115185.htm

	-Robert