Revolutions in Mathematics.

[Bill Taylor]

I'm looking forward to reading this book - I've got it on reserve.

The matter is largely one of taste and terminology, as has been observed.

But here is my list.....

AXIOMATICS Thales, Euclid ...the first revolution.
INCOMMENSURABLES Pythagoras, Eudoxus ...the classical revolution.
ALGORITHMICS Al Khowarismi ...the still-born revolution.
BASE-10 POSITIONAL Fibonacci etc ...the forgotten revolution.
ALGEBRA Vieta ...the unknown revolution.
CO-ORDINATE GEOM Oresme, Descartes ...the preparatory revolution...
CALCULUS Newton, Liebnitz ...the GREAT revolution...
ANALYSIS Cauchy, Weirstrass ...the consequential revolution.
NON-EUCLIDEAN G Gauss, Lobachevsky ...the philosopher's revolution.
SET THEORY Cantor ...the latest revolution.
LOGIC Frege, Godel ...the almost revolution.
CONSTRUCTIVISM Brouwer ...the failed revolution.
CATEGORIES Eilenberg, MacLane ...the petty revolution.

Oh well, just MHO.

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Bill Taylor w...@math.canterbury.ac.nz
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The smallest uninteresting natural number is *not* thereby interesting;
...but it *is* very meta-interesting !
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[john baez]

In article <C3yJJ...@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz> w...@math.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Taylor) writes:

>CATEGORIES Eilenberg, MacLane ...the petty revolution.
>
>Oh well, just MHO.

I'd call that a petty comment. I don't really care if category theory
is a "revolution" or not, but it's rapidly becoming more and more widely
used in mathematical physics, so it's not worthless (unless you count
the latter as such too, a perfectly understandable position).