📖 Read pages i-8 of Category Theory for the Sciences by David I. Spivak

📖 Read pages i-8, front matter and Chapter 1: Introduction of Category Theory for the Sciences by David I. Spivak.

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

But it is easy to think we are in agreement, when we really are not. Modeling our thoughts on heuristics and graphics may be convenient for quick travel down the road, but we are liable to miss our turnoff at the first mile. The danger is in mistaking convenient conceptualizations for what is actually there.

A functor is like a conductor of mathematical truth.

The answer is that when we formalize our ideas, our understanding is clarified.

Creativity demands clarity of thinking, and to think clearly about a subject requires an organized understanding of how its pieces fit together. Organization and clarity also lead to better communication with others. Academics often say they are paid to think and understand, but that is not the whole truth. They are paid to think, understand, and communicate their findings.

Acquired Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats by Jirí Adámek, Horst Herrlich, George E. Strecker

Acquired Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats by Jirí Adámek, Horst Herrlich, George E. Strecker (Dover Publications)

This up-to-date introductory treatment employs the language of category theory to explore the theory of structures. Its unique approach stresses concrete categories, and each categorical notion features several examples that clearly illustrate specific and general cases.

A systematic view of factorization structures, this volume contains seven chapters. The first five focus on basic theory, and the final two explore more recent research results in the realm of concrete categories, cartesian closed categories, and quasitopoi. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, it requires an elementary knowledge of set theory and can be used as a reference as well as a text. Updated by the authors in 2004, it offers a unifying perspective on earlier work and summarizes recent developments.

Book cover of Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats
Purchased for use in Mike Miller’s upcoming class on Category Theory at UCLA beginning in January 2019.

👓 nPOV | nLab

Read POV (ncatlab.org)

Wikipedia enforces its entries to adopt an NPOV – a neutral point of view . This is appropriate for an encyclopedia.

However, the nLab is not Wikipedia, nor is it an encyclopedia, although it does aspire to provide a useful reference in many areas (among its other purposes). In particular, the nnLab has a particular point of view, which we may call the nnPOV or the n- categorical point of view .

🔖 Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats by Jiri Adamek, Horst Herrlich, and George E. Strecker

Bookmarked Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats by Jirí Adámek, Horst Herrlich, and George E. Strecker (goodreads.com)
This up-to-date introductory treatment employs the language of category theory to explore the theory of structures. Its unique approach stresses concrete categories, and each categorical notion features several examples that clearly illustrate specific and general cases. A systematic view of factorization structures, this volume contains seven chapters. The first five focus on basic theory, and the final two explore more recent research results in the realm of concrete categories, cartesian closed categories, and quasitopoi. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, it requires an elementary knowledge of set theory and can be used as a reference as well as a text. Updated by the authors in 2004, it offers a unifying perspective on earlier work and summarizes recent developments.
Mike Miller has announced in class that he’ll be using Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats as the textbook for his upcoming  Introduction to Category Theory course at UCLA Extension this winter.

Naturally, he’ll be supplementing it heavily with his own notes.

A free .pdf copy of the text is also available online.

Black and Tealish Green book cover of Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats