One of the most interesting novelties in recent foundational studies is Voevodsky's Homotopical Type Theory project (see [here][1]). Finally homotopy theory ideas have entered in a royal fashion the foundational arena! I wonder if other areas of logic and foundational studies can be tackled from an homotopical standpoint. For instance, in model theory, one encounters the central notion of elementary equivalence: > two structures M and N of the same > signature $\sigma$ are called > elementarily equivalent if they > satisfy the same first-order > σ-sentences.σ-sentences. The question: > take elementary embedding as a notion > of [weak equivalence][2], what kind of > structure has the associated homotopy > category? Perhaps dreaming a little, > can one even manage to identify a > Quillen model structure on the > category of $\sigma$ -structures? NOTE: Andreas Blass has (rightly) asked why I mention elementary embedding in my question, whereas the title talks about homotopy equivalences. Point well taken: I should reformulate the question in a broader form, as: can you choose some maps in the category as weak equivalences, so that we can have a homotopy category, possibly with a good amount of homotopy limits and colimits to do some real computations? PS: The dream behind this question is that perhaps one could think of an elementary substructure as a homotopical retract of the ambient structure , and more generally one could come up with a notion of "continuous deformation" of structures, just like in the topological category [1]: http://homotopytypetheory.org/ [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_equivalence_(homotopy_theory)