ABSTRACT
Much has been made of the penchant of modern mathematics for the general and the abstract. 1 From Hilbert to Grothendieck many of the great movements of mathematics in this century have been dominated by attempts to increase the scope and range of mathematical subject matters by increased abstraction and generalization. While it may be argued that the mathematics of the past twenty or so years shows a reaction to this tendency, the flow of generalization and the desire to deal with cases previously considered inaccessible due, for example, to the presence of singularities or absence of restriction to finite dimensions has, if anything, intensified.
