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Giorgio Mossa
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Natural transformations as categorical homotopies

Every text book I've ever read about Category Theory gives the definition of natural transformation as a collection of morphisms which make the well known diagrams commute. There is another possible definition of natural transformation, which appears to be a categorification of homotopy:

given two functors $\mathcal F,\mathcal G \colon \mathcal C \to \mathcal D$ a natural transformation is a functor $\varphi \colon \mathcal C \times 2 \to \mathcal D$, where $2$ is the arrow category $0 \to 1$, such that $\varphi(-,0)=\mathcal F$ and $\varphi(-,1)=\mathcal G$.

My question is:

why doesn't anybody use this definition of natural transformation which seems to be more "natural" (at least for me)?

(Edit:) It seems that many people use this definition of natural transformation. This arises the following question:

Have anyone ever introduced natural transformation in this "homotopical" way rather then the classical one in any reference like a textbook or some lecture notes?

Giorgio Mossa
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