dg.differential geometry - Why is the exterior algebra so ubiquitous?

I will only answer for the link between determinants, differential forms and the Grassmannian.

The fact is that determinant, up to a sign, represents the volume of a parallelepipedal having n assigned vectors as sides. The sign is determined by orientation of this solid.

Indeed the axioms for the determinant can be translated geometrically: for instance the fact that the determinant vanishes when two columns are equal corresponds to the fact that a solid lieing in a hyperplane has 0 volume.

Now take a a linear map f expressed by a matrix A: the image of the unit cube is the solid generated by the columns of A; so f stretchs volumes by a factor |det(A)|, by the previous remark.

This is the infinitesimal expression of the usual formula for the change of variables in the integral, and it is the reason why the Jacobian determinant appears there. It is just the infinitesimal factor by which you multiply volumes. I hope this gives a rough explanation why the determinant appears in this formula.

Now to differential forms. Assume you want to integrate a quantity on a manifold, say a function. You may want to try to integrate it in local coordinates, but the result will depend on the coordinates chosen. So in order to get something well-defined you need a quantity whose local expression changes by the inverse factor (ok, I'm neglecting orientation here). This is exactly a n-form, whose local expression changes by the determinant of the Jacobian of the inverse change of coodinates.

This vague discussion should so far give an idea why differential form of maximal degree are apt to be integrated on oriented manifolds. Now choose a manifold M. You can integrate k-forms on M on k-subvarieties of M, so differential forms of any degree appear as dual elements of subvarieties of the corresponding dimension. Pushing this correspondence a bit explain why the complex of differential form gives the cohomology of M. But this is a topological invariant, so it has plenty of other constructions.

So we get an analytic tool (differential forms) which describes part of the topology of M; something which of course is worthy studying. Feeew!! If you got this far, you can understand what kind of link I see between determinants and differential forms.

As a particular case, this also give an explanation of the link with Grasmmannian: to a given subspace A you just associate the (constant) differential forms dual to it, up to multiples; this allows you to think of point of the Grassmannian as a point in a projective space, giving (more or less) the usual Plucker embedding. I mean: dual elements to general subvarieties are noncostant differential forms, but if you just restrict to subspaces you can just use costant differential forms.

I don't have an intuitive explanation of the link with irreducible representations of GL and I don't know Fermions, so I can't help you there.