[whatshisface]

If category theory is your first exposure to proofs and logic it can benefit you a lot, although number theory might be a more fun and more concrete way to get the same result. If you know a lot about more than one field of math, as a great big generalization over everything category theory can also help.

I should warn you that there is a social bias towards saying that you found a lot of insight in studying something, and a bias against saying that studying it was a waste of time, irrespective of whether or not the thing is actually helpful. Aristotle could stare at a rock and end up with some insight, so anyone who stares at a rock and admits it hasn't helped them has to publicly admit they are not as smart as Aristotle. They say this is how geology got started. ;)

[leereeves]

Aristotle might have been able to stare at a rock and say something clever, but most of his ideas about science were wrong, starting from the very definition of science, which he believed should be based on unprovable first principles (like mathematical axioms).

He rejected atomic theory, believed the Earth was the center of the universe and the four fundamental elements were air, fire, water, and earth, and thought heavy objects fell faster and moving objects would tend to come to a stop if nothing interacted with them.

These were observations that Aristotle and his audience accepted as "obvious". It took more careful and patient observers to discern the less obvious truth.

[ci5er]

It's an iterative process. Anthro-centricism is powerful in terms of what it makes "obvious". The universe spins about the earth. That atoms are made up of objects. That we are the pinnacle of local evolution. That reality is really real.