Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!umich!bushido!dbc From: dbc@bushido.uucp (Dave Caswell) Newsgroups: comp.theory Subject: Re: Intro Category Theory? Message-ID: <1990Aug19.185626.878@bushido.uucp> Date: 19 Aug 90 18:56:26 GMT References: <9008161733.aa29977@PARIS.ICS.UCI.EDU> <26CC3FC9.14951@ics.uci.edu> Organization: Bushido Systems of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Lines: 15 >Finally, if you are a serious student of category theory, the best >book on this subject is by Mac Lane, one of the founders of category >theory. The precision, succinctness, and clarity of exposition far >surpasses that in any other book. The author stresses the fundamental >unity of various categorical concepts such as universal arrows, >limits, adjoints, and representable functors. >However, as the title implies, this book presumes a fair amount of >mathematical background. A good book, but not particularly readable. The best simple introduction I've seen is Mathematical Physics, by Robert Gerock, it is part of the Chicago Lecture in Physics. It is math that is "good" for physics, and doesn't have much directly to do with physics. After this book I suggest Abelian Categories by Peter Freyd part of the Harper's Series in Modern Mathematics.