History
The term predates the foundation of category theory as a subject itself. Referring to a joint paper with Samuel Eilenberg that introduced the notion of a "category" in 1942, Saunders Mac Lane wrote the subject was 'then called "general abstract nonsense"'. The term is often used to describe the application of category theory and its techniques to less abstract domains.
The term is believed to have been coined by the mathematician Norman Steenrod, himself one of the developers of the categorical point of view. This term is used by practitioners as an indication of mathematical sophistication (or possession of a deeper perspective) rather than as a derogatory designation.
Certain ideas and constructions in mathematics display a uniformity throughout many domains. The unifying theme is category theory. When their audience can be assumed to be familiar with the general form of such arguments, mathematicians will use the expression Such and such is true by abstract nonsense rather than provide an elaborate explanation of particulars.
Read more about this topic: Abstract Nonsense
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)