Variations on a theme of homotopy (Q2448536)

This is a more or less loose chat about, what the author calls, the \textit{philosophical, historical} and (added by the reviewer) \textit{political} aspects of the good old notion of homotopy. He starts with considerations about different properties of a cone \(-\times I: \mathcal{C} \longrightarrow \mathcal{C}\) (for an appropriate category \(\mathcal{C}\)), a discussion of the properties of such a cone ensuring that this homotopy is, e.g., symmetric and terminates with simplicial model structures in the sense of Quillen. Furthermore the author touches 2-categories, homotopical coherence and cubical enrichment, as well as pro-homotopy (i.e., homotopy in a pro-category with inverse systems as objects), étale homotopy (in algebraic geometry) and proper homotopy theory. At some occasion the author makes an attempt to develop some ancient ideas of strong shape, totally omitting any results of the last 30 years, referring instead to Mardešić's book for more bibliographic information. There appears no S-duality, no mentioning of the important contributions of Elon Lima, etc.