Topós

Topós (from Greek τόπος, "place") is a term with multiple related meanings in rhetoric, literary studies, philosophy and mathematics. Historically it appears in ancient Greek rhetoric and logic as the basis for the notion of "commonplaces" or loci — recurring lines of argument or conceptual "places" from which speakers and writers draw material for invention. Aristotle treated these in his work on dialectic and rhetoric, where topoi are heuristic devices for generating premises and strategies of reasoning. In medieval and early modern scholarship the term evolved into the practice of commonplace books and classificatory lists of useful themes.

In literary and cultural studies topoi (plural) denote conventional motifs, themes or situations that recur across texts and genres, serving as recognizable narrative or rhetorical patterns.

In mathematics and logic "topos" (plural "topoi" or "toposes") denotes an abstract categorical structure that generalizes set theory and the notion of space. Introduced in the context of algebraic geometry by Alexandre Grothendieck and later axiomatized as an elementary topos by William Lawvere and Myles Tierney, a topos is a category sharing many properties of the category of sets; it supports notions of sheaves, internal logic and generalized spaces. Topos theory links geometry, logic and category theory and has applications across algebraic geometry, topology and theoretical computer science.

Across disciplines, topós retains the core idea of a "place"—whether figurative, rhetorical or formal—where ideas and structures are located and organized.