Customer Reviews

A General Topology Workbook

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This book brings back memories of a graduate course in general topology that I took as an undergraduate, which was taught via the "Moore method", after the late Robert Lee Moore, who invented it. Handouts were given to the class (there were only 3 of us), and each of us was expected to work out or prove every result in the handout, without consulting references or collaborating with other students. Theorems were to be proved, or counterexamples given, but we did not know a priori which item from the handout was actually true or false. Needless to say this took a lot of work, and all of us had to present our results on the blackboard for scrutiny by both classmates and instructor.

The Moore method has its defenders and detractors. It certainly encourages originality of thought and strict intellectual honesty. Students can find incredible reinforcment as they discover that they can indeed give original proofs of sometimes very difficult (and famous) results in general topology. The downside is that not as much material is covered as compared to a traditional course in general topology. Students who are hungry to get to the frontiers of research might become impatient because of this.

This book does not follow the strict methodologies that we followed in our class, but instead reveals to the reader which results are true and then encourages their proof. Readers are also lead through the construction of examples and counterexamples, allowing them to gain more of the intuition needed for a thorough understanding of general topology. It is also a good book to use for independent study, as the answers to the results are given in the book (and this actually is the major portion of its bulk).