Questions tagged [ct.category-theory]

Enriched categories, topoi, abelian categories, monoidal categories, homological algebra.

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230 votes
13 answers
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Is there an introduction to probability theory from a structuralist/categorical perspective?

The title really is the question, but allow me to explain. I am a pure mathematician working outside of probability theory, but the concepts and techniques of probability theory (in the sense of ...
Pete L. Clark's user avatar
22 votes
2 answers
2k views

Non weakly-group-theoretical integral fusion category

Is there an integral fusion category of rank $7$, FPdim $210$ and type $(1,5,5,5,6,7,7)$ with the following fusion rules (or the little $\color{purple}{\text{variation}}$ below)? $$\scriptsize{\begin{...
Sebastien Palcoux's user avatar
46 votes
2 answers
6k views

What interesting/nontrivial results in Algebraic geometry require the existence of universes?

Brian Conrad indicated a while ago that many of the results proven in AG using universes can be proven without them by being very careful (link). I'm wondering if there are any results in AG that ...
Harry Gindi's user avatar
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36 votes
1 answer
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Infinite tensor products

Let $A$ be a commutative ring and $M_i, i \in I$ be a infinite family of $A$-modules. Define their tensor product $\bigotimes_{i \in I} M_i$ to be a representing object of the functor of multilinear ...
Martin Brandenburg's user avatar
91 votes
10 answers
14k views

Reflection principle vs universes

In category-theoretic discussions, there is often the temptation to look at the category of all abelian groups, or of all categories, etc., which quickly leads to the usual set-theoretic problems. ...
Peter Scholze's user avatar
67 votes
2 answers
14k views

Is there a category structure one can place on measure spaces so that category-theoretic products exist?

The usual category of measure spaces consists of objects $(X, \mathcal{B}_X, \mu_X)$, where $X$ is a space, $\mathcal{B}_X$ is a $\sigma$-algebra on $X$, and $\mu_X$ is a measure on $X$, and measure ...
Damek Davis's user avatar
62 votes
4 answers
6k views

When size matters in category theory for the working mathematician

I think a related question might be this (Set-Theoretic Issues/Categories). There are many ways in which you can avoid set theoretical paradoxes in dealing with category theory (see for instance ...
jg1896's user avatar
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78 votes
9 answers
21k views

Results that are widely accepted but no proof has appeared

The background of this question is the talk given by Kevin Buzzard. I could not find the slides of that talk. The slides of another talk given by Kevin Buzzard along the same theme are available here. ...
35 votes
3 answers
2k views

Internal logic of the topos of simplicial sets

I am looking for a closed statement (i.e. not depending on any parameter objects) which is true in the internal logic of the topos of simplicial sets, but is not an intuitionistic tautology. Ideally, ...
Mike Shulman's user avatar
106 votes
15 answers
35k views

Most striking applications of category theory?

What are the most striking applications of category theory? I'm trying to motivate deeper study of category theory and I have only come across the following significant examples: Joyal's ...
79 votes
5 answers
5k views

Can the Lawvere fixed point theorem be used to prove the Brouwer fixed point theorem?

The Lawvere fixed point theorem asserts that if $X, Y$ are objects in a category with finite products such that the exponential $Y^X$ exists, and if $f : X \to Y^X$ is a morphism which is surjective ...
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
75 votes
13 answers
12k views

What precisely Is "Categorification"?

(And what's it good for.) Related MO questions (with some very nice answers): examples-of-categorification; can-we-categorify-the-equation $(1-t)(1+t+t^2+\dots)=1$?; categorification-request.
Gil Kalai's user avatar
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50 votes
5 answers
14k views

The unification of Mathematics via Topos Theory

In her paper The unification of Mathematics via Topos Theory, Olivia Caramello says "one can generate a huge number of new results in any mathematical field without any creative effort". Is ...
Roy Maclean's user avatar
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38 votes
3 answers
3k views

How do you define (infinity,1) categories in Homotopy Type Theory?

One of the major motivations of Homotopy Type Theory is that it naturally builds in higher coherences from the beginning. One important setting where higher coherence requirements get annoying is ...
Noah Snyder's user avatar
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37 votes
3 answers
3k views

What is the point of pointwise Kan extensions?

Recall that a Kan extension is called pointwise if it can be computed by the usual (co)limit formula, or equivalently if it is preserved by (co)representable functors. I have seen pointwise Kan ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
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32 votes
4 answers
6k views

Who needs Replacement anyway?

The set theory ETCS famously comes without the Replacement axiom schema (or an equivalent) that is part of ZFC. One (to me, not apparently useful) set that one cannot build in ETCS is $\coprod_{n\in \...
David Roberts's user avatar
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26 votes
2 answers
7k views

Large cardinal axioms and Grothendieck universes

A cardinal $\lambda$ is weakly inaccessible, iff a. it is regular (i.e. a set of cardinality $\lambda$ can't be represented as a union of sets of cardinality $<\lambda$ indexed by a set of ...
algori's user avatar
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15 votes
6 answers
3k views

Giving $\mathit{Top}(X,Y)$ an appropriate topology

$\DeclareMathOperator\Top{\mathit{Top}}$I am not sure if its OK to ask this question here. Let $\Top$ be the category of topological spaces. Let $X,Y$ be objects in $\Top$. Let $F:\mathbb{I}\...
Amr's user avatar
  • 1,025
61 votes
13 answers
8k views

Example of an unnatural isomorphism

Can anyone give an example of an unnatural isomorphism? Or, maybe, somebody can explain why unnatural isomorphisms do not exist. Consider two functors $F,G: {\mathcal C} \rightarrow {\mathcal D}$. We ...
46 votes
7 answers
6k views

What is an explicit bijection in combinatorics?

A standard way of demonstrating that two collections of combinatorial objects have the same cardinality is to exhibit a bijection between them. Browsing through some examples (here, there, yonder) ...
Andrej Bauer's user avatar
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42 votes
8 answers
5k views

What is a metric space?

According to categorical lore, objects in a category are just a way of separating morphisms. The objects themselves are considered slightly disparagingly. In particular, if I can't distinguish ...
Andrew Stacey's user avatar
37 votes
4 answers
6k views

Could groups be used instead of sets as a foundation of mathematics?

Sets are the only fundamental objects in the theory $\sf ZFC$. But we can use $\sf ZFC$ as a foundation for all of mathematics by encoding the various other objects we care about in terms of sets. The ...
Oscar Cunningham's user avatar
35 votes
3 answers
3k views

Is every abelian group a colimit of copies of Z?

More precisely, is every abelian group a colimit $\text{colim}_{j \in J} F(j)$ over a diagram $F : J \to \text{Ab}$ where each $F(j)$ is isomorphic to $\mathbb{Z}$? Note that this does not follow ...
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
34 votes
2 answers
2k views

What are the algebras for the double dualization monad?

Let $k$ be a field, and let $\mathbf{Vect}$ denote the category of vector spaces (possibly infinite-dimensional) over $k$. Taking duals gives a functor $(\ )^*\colon \mathbf{Vect}^{\mathrm{op}} \to \...
Tom Leinster's user avatar
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33 votes
7 answers
3k views

Do non-associative objects have a natural notion of representation?

A magma is a set $M$ equipped with a binary operation $* : M \times M \to M$. In abstract algebra we typically begin by studying a special type of magma: groups. Groups satisfy certain additional ...
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
30 votes
5 answers
1k views

Are there non-trivial infinite chains of adjoint functors?

There are self-adjoint functors $A \dashv A$. There are also functors $A$ that are both left- and right-adjoint to another functor $B$. $$A \dashv B \dashv A$$ There are also finite cyclic chains of ...
Jeremy Gross's user avatar
27 votes
7 answers
4k views

In what sense are fields an algebraic theory?

Since there is no "free field generated by a set", it would seem that 1) there is no monad on Set whose algebras are exactly the fields and 2) there is no Lawvere theory whose models in Set are ...
Omar Antolín-Camarena's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
1k views

Reference for "lax monoidal functors" = "monoids under Day convolution"

Suppose $A$ and $C$ two symmetric monoidal categories. Let's say that $A$ is small and $C$ is locally presentable, and let's assume also that the tensor product on $C$ preserves colimits separately in ...
Clark Barwick's user avatar
16 votes
1 answer
414 views

Examples of statements that are valid in every spatial topos

I am looking for statements¹ that, when interpreted in the internal language of a topos, are valid in all spatial toposes (i.e., the topos of sheaves of any topological space) that are not valid in ...
Gro-Tsen's user avatar
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13 votes
4 answers
3k views

When do Kan extensions preserve limits/colimits?

I'm guessing the answer to this question is well-known: Suppose that $Y:C \to P$ and $F:C \to D$ are functors with $D$ cocomplete. Then one can define the point-wise Kan extension $\mathbf{Lan}_Y\...
David Carchedi's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
2k views

Projectives and Injectives in Functor Categories

Would it be possible to enlighten me (or even better give a reference) about enough projectives (injectives) in functor categories? Here is a precise question. Let $C$ be a small category, whose ...
Bugs Bunny's user avatar
  • 12.1k
7 votes
1 answer
550 views

Is there an integral fusion ring which is not of Frobenius type?

Combinatorially, a fusion ring $\mathcal{F}$ is nothing but a finite set $B=\{b_1, \dots, b_r\}$ (generating the $\mathbb{Z}$-module $\mathbb{Z} B$) together with fusion rules: $$ b_i \cdot b_j = \...
Sebastien Palcoux's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
1k views

Regular monomorphisms of schemes

In the category of schemes, the equalizer of two morphisms $f,g : X \to Y$ is always a locally closed immersion into $X$ (since this is just $X \times_{Y \times Y} Y$ and $\Delta : Y \to Y \times Y$ ...
Martin Brandenburg's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
640 views

Can $L^1_{loc}$ be represented as colimit?

Let $L^1_{loc}$ denote the set of all functions from $\mathbb{R}$ to itself which are locally integrable. For every infinite compact subset $K\subseteq \mathbb{R}$, let $L^1_{m_K}$ denote the space ...
ABIM's user avatar
  • 5,019
150 votes
12 answers
41k views

"Philosophical" meaning of the Yoneda Lemma

The Yoneda Lemma is a simple result of category theory, and its proof is very straightforward. Yet I feel like I do not truly understand what it is about; I have seen a few comments here mentioning ...
146 votes
10 answers
16k views

What non-categorical applications are there of homotopical algebra?

(To be honest, I actually mean something more general than 'homotopical algebra' - topos theory, $\infty$-categories, operads, anything that sounds like its natural home would be on the nLab.) More ...
94 votes
7 answers
9k views

When does Cantor-Bernstein hold?

The Cantor-Bernstein theorem in the category of sets (A injects in B, B injects in A => A, B equivalent) holds in other categories such as vector spaces, compact metric spaces, Noetherian topological ...
Randomblue's user avatar
  • 2,937
78 votes
6 answers
6k views

Rigidity of the category of schemes

Call a category $C$ rigid if every equivalence $C \to C$ is isomorphic to the identity. I don't know if this is standard terminology. Many of the usual algebraic categories are rigid, for example sets,...
Martin Brandenburg's user avatar
73 votes
13 answers
6k views

Why is Set, and not Rel, so ubiquitous in mathematics?

The concept of relation in the history of mathematics, either consciously or not, has always been important: think of order relations or equivalence relations. Why was there the necessity of singling ...
73 votes
6 answers
5k views

whence commutative diagrams?

It seems that commutative diagrams appeared sometime in the late 1940s -- for example, Eilenberg-McLane (1943) group cohomology paper does not have any, while the 1953 Hochschild-Serre paper does. ...
Igor Rivin's user avatar
  • 95.6k
71 votes
16 answers
20k views

Is there a nice application of category theory to functional/complex/harmonic analysis?

[Title changed, and wording of question tweaked, by YC, because the original title asked a question which seems different from the one people want to answer.] I've read looked at the examples in most ...
64 votes
6 answers
9k views

Are dagger categories truly evil?

Recall that a dagger category is a category equipped with an involution $*:Hom(x,y)\to Hom(y,x)$ that satisfies $f^{**}=f$ and $f^* g^*=(gf)^*$. A prominent example of a dagger category is the ...
André Henriques's user avatar
61 votes
3 answers
8k views

Why do filtered colimits commute with finite limits?

It's not hard to show that this is true in the category Set, and proofs have been written down in many places. But all the ones I know are a bit fiddly. Question 1: is there a soft proof of this fact?...
Steve Lack's user avatar
  • 3,081
51 votes
2 answers
6k views

Which colimits commute with which limits in the category of sets?

Given two categories $I$ and $J$ we say that colimits of shape $I$ commute with limits of shape $J$ in the category of sets, if for any functor $F : I \times J \to \text{Set}$ the canonical map $$\...
Omar Antolín-Camarena's user avatar
49 votes
4 answers
4k views

Why is there a duality between spaces and commutative algebras?

1) The category of affine varieties over $\mathbb{C}$ is equivalent to the opposite category of finitely generated reduced algebras over $\mathbb{C}$. The equivalence associates to an affine variety ...
Yonatan Harpaz's user avatar
46 votes
8 answers
10k views

Non-examples of model structures, that fail for subtle/surprising reasons?

An often-cited principle of good mathematical exposition is that a definition should always come with a few examples and a few non-examples to help the learner get an intuition for where the concept's ...
Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine's user avatar
44 votes
11 answers
16k views

Resources for learning practical category theory

I've been doing functional programming, primarily in OCaml, for a couple years now, and have recently ventured into the land of monads. I'm able to work them now, and understand how to use them, but ...
42 votes
3 answers
4k views

The Origin(s) of Modular and Moduli

In mathematics and in physics, people use the terms "modular..." and "moduli space" very often. I was puzzled by the etymology, the origins and the similarity/equivalence/differences for these usages/...
wonderich's user avatar
  • 10.3k
42 votes
6 answers
6k views

What does "quantization is not a functor" really mean?

The answers to this question do a good job of exploring, at a heuristic level, what "quantization" should be. From my perspective, quantization involves replacing a (commutative) Poisson algebra by ...
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
37 votes
2 answers
3k views

How can I define the product of two ideals categorically?

Given a commutative ring $R$, there is a category whose objects are epimorphisms surjective ring homomorphisms $R \to S$ and whose morphisms are commutative triangles making two such epimorphisms ...
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar

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