Talk:Abstract nonsense

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Please update this rating as the article progresses, or if the rating is inaccurate. Click to show/hide comments. Please add to or update the comments to suggest improvements to the article. needs refs, try finding some here.--Cronholm144 08:11, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a wonderful little article. JonathanFeinberg 14:16, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of the term

The first paragraph about the origen of the expression is confusing and even contradictory: was it N. Steenrod or S. Maclane that coined the term? I thought I gave a reference citing Steenrod, but someone else put the statement by Maclane which seems to suggest something else. Whatever it is, we need to straighten this out. --CSTAR (talk) 18:08, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

When Mac Lane writes (in his 1997 retrospective) that the subject was then [i.e., in 1942 or thereabouts] called "general abstract nonsense", he is clearly, almost emphatically, not claiming that he was the originator. This quote establishes, though, that the coinage predates category theory itself as a subject, which codified the abstract and economical form of reasoning already developed and fruitfully applied in homological algebra. I've tried to make this clearer in the article.  --Lambiam 00:30, 15 December 2007 (UTC)