Skip to main content
9 of 11
corrected last question
Giorgio Mossa
  • 3.3k
  • 1
  • 29
  • 30

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:

Is there any introductory textbook (or lecture) on category theory that introduces natural transformation in this "homotopical" way rather then the classical one?

(Edit:) I belive that "The power of a question is all the ideas or other things you find out trying to answering it", this question gave to me a lot of ideas, I think I'll try to obtain just one last. After the various answers and comments I belive it's know the time to make this last question:

Would it be a good idea presenting the concept of natural transformation in the homotopical way rather then the classical one in a introductory textbook to category theory?

I'd like to see pros and cons.

Giorgio Mossa
  • 3.3k
  • 1
  • 29
  • 30