[gravypod]

Have there been developments of similar or better constructs accidentally/naturally outside of the efforts put forward by PLT?

If I wanted to see what was being said by the field, are there any seminal works to 'ingest'?

[bassislife]

For category theory, I don't think so. But if we take tensor algebra, of course, in physics, especially quantum mechanics .The thing is, you could approach the same physical problem at different levels of abstraction and would therefore use either or. For the study of manifolds, people generally tend to favor tensorial analysis. But some results could be found within the framework of category theory.

In terms of seminal work, I admit I am quite ignorant. I would check with SIAM.