Pausing en route

Clare Bridge, from Garret Hostel Bridge, October

One route from home to what passes for work takes me over Garret Hostel bridge; and early in the morning, before the tourists arrive and crowd the bridge, I can pause to take in the view which never ceases to delight.

These days, at the end of the lane, I go right, to where the mathematicians hang out at CMS, rather than left to old philosophical haunts. But I know very few of the philosophers now, and some mathmos have been kindly welcoming. Moreover, I find the café at CMS really rather conducive to work (if we can forget about the grimly bad coffee). So here I am at lunchtime, pausing for a while, as I try to batter the next few chapters of the Gentle Guide into shape, surrounding by the buzz of conversations and on-going supervisions at adjacent tables.

I have been going to Peter Johnstone’s Category Theory lectures three times a week. Rewarding, and something of an advertisement for old-school chalk-and-talk lectures — the chalk providing exemplary notes, the obiter dicta illuminating. But tough going. Seven lectures in, and we are already proving that a functor  to has a left adjoint iff for every the comma category has an initial object. Kudos to those students who fully are on the pace. But also, judging from a conversation or two, a supplementary discursive Gentle Introduction to help ease the path into category theory might yet be appreciated by some. Onward!