I disagree with the idea that one doesn’t have intuitions about generalization if one hasn’t studied mathematics. One things that I find so interesting about CT is that it is so general it applies as much to everyday common sense concepts as it does to mathematical ones. David Spivak’s ontology logs are a great illustration of this.
I do agree that there isn’t a really good beginners book that covers category theory in a general way. But there are some amazing YouTube lectures. I got started on CT with this series, Category Theory for Beginners. The videos are quite long, but the lecturer does an amazing job explaining all the difficult concepts with lots of great visual diagrams. What is great about this series is that despite the “beginners” in the title he actually covers many more advanced topics such as adjunction, Yoneda’s lemma, and topos theory in a way that doesn’t presuppose prior mathematical knowledge.
In terms of books, Conceptual Mathematics really helped me with the basics of sets and functions, although it doesn’t get into the more abstract stuff very much. Finally, Category Theory for Programmers is quite accessible if you have any background in computer programming.
I disagree with the idea that one doesn’t have intuitions about generalization if one hasn’t studied mathematics. One things that I find so interesting about CT is that it is so general it applies as much to everyday common sense concepts as it does to mathematical ones. David Spivak’s ontology logs are a great illustration of this.
I do agree that there isn’t a really good beginners book that covers category theory in a general way. But there are some amazing YouTube lectures. I got started on CT with this series, Category Theory for Beginners. The videos are quite long, but the lecturer does an amazing job explaining all the difficult concepts with lots of great visual diagrams. What is great about this series is that despite the “beginners” in the title he actually covers many more advanced topics such as adjunction, Yoneda’s lemma, and topos theory in a way that doesn’t presuppose prior mathematical knowledge.
In terms of books, Conceptual Mathematics really helped me with the basics of sets and functions, although it doesn’t get into the more abstract stuff very much. Finally, Category Theory for Programmers is quite accessible if you have any background in computer programming.