Marta Bunge's letters to the categories list: cracks and pots

Sun 12/03/2006 11:30 PM

To: categories@mta.ca
Subject: cracks and pots

Hi,
I just came across the following pages
http://motls.blogspot.com/2004/11/category-theory-and-physics.html
http://motls.blogspot.com/2004/11/this-week-208-analysis.html
written by Lubos Motl, a physicist (string theorist). Some of you may find these articles interesting and probably revealing.
Are we category theorists as a whole going to quietly accept getting discredited by a minority of us presumably applying category theory to string theory? It is surely not too late to react and point out that this is not what (all of) category theory is about. Please give a thought about what we, as a community, can urgently do to repair this damaging impression. Unless we are prepared to wait until things change by themselves within our lifetime.

Hopefully disturbing your weekend,
Cordially,
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
marta.bunge@mcgill.ca
http://www.math.mcgill.ca/bunge/
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>From: Bob Rosebrugh
>To: martabunge@hotmail.com
>Subject: cats post
>Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 18:15:29 -0400 (AST)
>
>Dear Marta -
>
>Thanks for sending a message that I (at least) am very glad to see.
>Unfortunately, as sent it is about 153K - way too long for a cats
>posting (and I wasn't able to get through all of it as I am just now
>using a dial-up connection in Sydney). Would you be able to resend your
>message, and perhaps append some urls instead of the full content, or
>perhaps cut and paste (as text) the parts you particularly want sent
>along.
>
>Sorry about the extra work,
>thanks, Bob