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Max New (Sep 02 2022 at 18:13):I find the nlab article Gruppenpest about the early disdain for group theory by some physicists to be quite relatable to the reception that category theory has by many in computer science (I'm sure other fields as well). Nowadays we see this as completely ridiculous and much of group theory is perceived as very basic undergraduate-level mathematics. I sometime relate this story to skeptical computer scientists as a cautionary tale that they are only holding themselves back by being resistant to manifestly useful abstractions in our field.
I have a linguistic question though. I don't speak German, so what would the analogous term for category theory? Would it be "Kategoriepest"?
Jonathan Weinberger (Sep 02 2022 at 22:36):From my perspective, the analogue would be "Kategorienpest" (the "n" makes it plural)