Praise for A Categorical
Modern technology is increasingly indistinguishable from magic, and its incantations are written in math. Unfortunately, mathematicians are challenged to explain what they do and why it matters. Baylor and Montero have written a book for the rest of us, explaining why composition is the key to understanding today’s world and building tomorrow’s.
A Categorical Defense of Our Future complements broad-ranging academic theory with a deep, lived experience from corporate industry to argue for a more principled understanding of the systems that govern our lives, from markets and institutions to communities and ecosystems. With clear prose and concrete examples, the authors show us why existing approaches to complexity fail, and point the way towards a new science of systems to help us understand the nth order effects of our interactions in an increasingly complex world.
Spencer Breiner, Ph.D., Mathematician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
As a student of psychology and social work, mathematics was something I had to endure. I experienced it as an exclusive club for an elite few who had the mysterious key to find answers to pre-determined problems with pre-determined answers that we just hadn’t identified the formula for, yet.
After reading this surprisingly beautiful book, A Categorical Defense of Our Future, mathematics has been re-branded for me as a magical language with the capacity for endless expansion and inclusion. A way to compose our siloed intellectual, emotional, and spiritual existences into a singular ever-evolving expressive meaningful process of collective conscious growth. A process that can compose a coming together as individual and diverse entities, not because it is politically correct, but because it is the only way forward together, as an ever-evolving whole.
Esteban and Brandon are asking us to trust ourselves and each other to be able to collectively co-create a future that includes all of us. They are inviting us to allow ourselves to float unmoored until we can experience the ocean fully without instinctively reaching for the buoy of our fear-driven false idol of control.
Michelle Hughes Clinical Social Worker and Hopeful Citizen of the Universe