The Joy of Abstraction book club
February – October 2023
This page is for a book club that was run in 2023. Although the club is now finished, recordings of the answer sessions can be found below.
About
Welcome to the The Joy of Abstraction book club! The Joy of Abstraction, by Eugenia Cheng, is an introduction to category theory for anyone who wants to get into the formality of the subject but does not necessarily have the mathematical background to read a standard textbook. Part 1 starts gently, so that readers can build up to the formality of rigorous mathematics even if they haven’t encountered it before. Part 2 gets into formal rigorous category theory, including limits and colimits, duality, functors, natural transformations, and the Yoneda lemma.
Dr Cheng wanted to give people an opportunity to ask questions and get help with understanding the book. This book club was run asynchronously, at an approximate rate of one chapter per week and readers invited to submit questions for each chapter according to a published schedule. We then collated the questions and Dr Cheng made a video each week addressing the questions for that chapter. The questions were kept anonymous, and we welcomed any question that comes from you wanting to understand something more!
Dr Cheng maintains a webpage recording errata for The Joy of Abstraction here.
Videos
There is a YouTube playlist of all the videos, and you can subscribe to the Topos Institute YouTube channel to be notified of future uploads.
| Chapter | Question submission deadline | Discussion and answers video |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 19th February | youtu.be/zW-RGn1hrk4 |
| 2 | 26th February | youtu.be/C6A8tqGsQWM |
| 3 | 5th March | youtu.be/Hgfjb1SBZKs |
| 4 | 12th March | youtu.be/vzWxQN6KLCU |
| 5 | 19th March | youtu.be/Y-XzgteQBXY |
| 6 | 26th March | youtu.be/SBLAiadPjMA |
| 7 | 2nd April | youtu.be/pbTnrbFLaIs |
| 8 | 9th April | youtu.be/SLxqf_ne5x8 |
| 9 | 16th April | youtu.be/f2qC6mid1XE |
| 10 | 23rd April | youtu.be/ff4Kgsdoz80 |
| 11 | 30th April | youtu.be/kxKA5WUcACw |
| 12 | 7th May | youtu.be/PQPQ6gKAjVc |
| 13 | 14th May | youtu.be/v2YV4idX4-g |
| 14 | 21st May | youtu.be/D2fY5TwaG0o |
| 15 | 4th June | youtu.be/_YXgTBuaC2c |
| 16 | 18th June | youtu.be/BQqKiZ3nYL8 |
| 17 | 2nd July | youtu.be/q2vG4gAl5SQ |
| 18 | 16th July | youtu.be/vuMFJeXhD7U |
| 19 | 30th July | youtu.be/mMy9tkeCUwQ |
| 20 | 13th August | youtu.be/ZHq5zA6dJjM |
| 21 | 27th August | youtu.be/fjAJ1Z0rOxE |
| 22 | 10th September | youtu.be/c4kKUg9El6U |
| 23 | 24th September | youtu.be/a0x6XwoQImU |
| 24 + E | 8th October | youtu.be/TCYfICsBGeI |
Acknowledgements
Website and video editing for this book club is provided by Tim Hosgood, and administrative support by Juliet Szatko.