/sci/ is a shithole, this thread just confirms it. Not a single reply worth shit.
>>11241938Cat theory generalises existing notions from various fields. You have to have at least a basic understanding of:
- general topology
- abstract algebra
Why? Firstly, because otherwise it will all be just gibberish and you will gain no intuition behind the notions and definitions. You will basically be like a monkey who goes through a calculus course - you can copy stuff from the book but you won't see what the fuck are we doing and why.
Secondly, because math is learnt by solving problems and most of the problems refer to those fields. If you don't know what is a free abelian group or differential graded algebra what is a T0/Hausdorff space, obviously you won't be able to do the exercises and then the whole thing is pointless.
Undergraduate level for both courses should be fine. I don't remember this book dealing with Ext/Tor functors (many introductory cat theory books do) so you probably will be fine without knowing basic algebraic topology (although it will definitely help as it was the key field that motivated the whole cat theory in the first place).
