An attempt at moyenne (ou basse)
vulgarisation, by a (slumming) specialist in Category Theory:
To make mathematics palatable for
the lay reader, the author must sweeten the pill. There are many ways to do
this, but Eugenia Cheng is surely the first to have approached the task
literally, writing a math book in which almost every chapter begins with a
recipe for dessert.
Cheng never quite overeggs her
metaphor of the mathematician as chef, however …
But while she successfully conveys
a love of her subject, I felt shortchanged; Cheng never explains exactly how
category theory has shaped math, never shares its major results and its great
unsolved questions. Perhaps she thought the answers would be too arcane or
complicated for a book aimed at general readers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/books/review/how-to-bake-pi-by-eugenia-cheng.html?emc=edit_bk_20150612&nl=books&nlid=5160164&_r=0
Hard to get more random than that. How mathematics
is like a poker game; how
mathematics is like baseball; how
mathematics is like a chimpanzee riding a bicycle …
It is not that one cannot introduce ideas of category theory
to an intelligent general audience, without flattering their baser natures with
similes from the kitchen. Lawvere & Schanuel do just that in Conceptual Mathematics
(1997): elementary in the sense that it begins from the elements, without
assuming technical prerequisites from special fields, but sophisticated in that
it doesn’t glide or gloss over. But you won't find that sort of thing reviewed in the New York Times, where (increasingly) puff-pastry drives out the protein.
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