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Stream: community: general

Topic: repurposed language


view this post on Zulip Daniel Geisler (May 08 2020 at 18:02):

My current understanding is that a significant number of terms in CT have been repurposed from technical English. Am I correct?

view this post on Zulip sarahzrf (May 08 2020 at 18:03):

like what?

view this post on Zulip sarahzrf (May 08 2020 at 18:04):

nothing occurs to me off the top of my head, but i'm not sure

view this post on Zulip sarahzrf (May 08 2020 at 18:04):

oh, from—i misread it as for, ha

view this post on Zulip Matteo Capucci (he/him) (May 13 2020 at 07:10):

:thinking: Technical like mathematical or something else?

view this post on Zulip Morgan Rogers (he/him) (May 13 2020 at 10:21):

Daniel Geisler said:

My current understanding is that a significant number of terms in CT have been repurposed from technical English. Am I correct?

Not necessarily technical. Many of the terms in sheaf theory come from wheat :upside_down:
But generally speaking it serves mathematics well to use obscure words for familiar concepts to describe mathematical objects, for the simple reason that their obscurity avoids confusion of the technical intended meaning with the common meaning (while the latter is relevant since it hopefully provides intuition for the technical meaning). Terms like "supine" and "prone" which respectively mean 'upright' and 'lying down', are used by Johnstone to distinguish the vertical and horizontal components of morphisms in fibrations from alternative kinds of vertical/horizontal morphisms.

view this post on Zulip Daniel Geisler (May 13 2020 at 14:46):

It blew my mind to realize that "composite" in CT is more abstract and versatile than what I'm used to.

view this post on Zulip Morgan Rogers (he/him) (May 13 2020 at 14:58):

In what sense?

view this post on Zulip Daniel Geisler (May 13 2020 at 15:30):

Instead of composite being related to functions from classical mathematics, it was most like a piece of computer code.

view this post on Zulip sarahzrf (May 13 2020 at 15:37):

how?

view this post on Zulip Morgan Rogers (he/him) (May 13 2020 at 15:39):

I don't know why I asked the question I did. It's the "not every morphism is a function" generalisation