Categorical Vocabulary
Appendix A
Categorical Vocabulary
Category theory is a language for systems that must compose. This appendix collects the definitions the main text requires. For the full theory, consult Mac Lane's Categories for the Working Mathematician or Spivak's Category Theory for the Sciences.
Category
A category consists of:
- A collection of objects:
- For each pair of objects , a collection of morphisms , written
- For each object , an identity morphism
- A composition operation: given and , there exists
satisfying associativity and identity .
A groupoid is a category in which every morphism is an isomorphism. A group is a groupoid with exactly one object.
Functor
A functor consists of a mapping on objects () and a mapping on morphisms () satisfying:
Natural Transformation
Given functors , a natural transformation assigns to each object a morphism such that for every :
This is the naturality square. When the book says "coherence," it often means the relevant squares commute.
Presheaf
A presheaf on is a functor . Concretely: for each object , a set of "sections over "; for each morphism , a restriction map , satisfying and .
A presheaf is "local data with restriction." Sheaves (Appendix B) add the coherence requirement: local data that agree on overlaps must glue to global data.
Limits and Colimits
| Name | Diagram Shape | Intuition |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Two objects, no arrows | Ordered pair; projections to both |
| Coproduct | Two objects, no arrows | Tagged union; injections from both |
| Pullback | Fiber product; pairs that agree on | |
| Pushout | Amalgamation; glue along shared | |
| Equalizer | Subobject where two maps agree |
Pullbacks formalize context overlap (Ch. 10); pushouts formalize vocabulary extension (Ch. 15).
Adjunction
An adjunction consists of functors and with a natural bijection:
Equivalently, natural transformations (unit) and (counit) satisfying the triangle identities.
is the "free construction" (best approximation from below); is the "forgetful functor" (best approximation from above). The unit measures how far is from already having the required structure; the counit measures how much redundancy the free construction introduced.
Isomorphism
A morphism is an isomorphism if there exists with and . The pair is the witness. Objects and are isomorphic, written .
Equivalence of Categories
An equivalence between and consists of functors and with natural isomorphisms and .
Equivalence relaxes isomorphism: the round-trip need not return the exact same object, only an isomorphic one. This is why the main text insists on witnessed equivalence (A10) rather than mere isomorphism (A8).
Site and Grothendieck Topology
A site is a category equipped with a Grothendieck topology : for each object , a specification of which families count as covers, satisfying stability, transitivity, and identity axioms.
The Context Site
The following definitions ground all context-indexed constructions in Parts III–VI.
A Context where is a name, is a signature, is a logic regime, and is provenance metadata.
A Context Morphism consists of a signature inclusion and a logic compatibility condition ( at least as strong as ). Direction: refines (more specific to more general).
Given and , the overlap .
A cover of is a family with . The Context Site equips the context category with this topology, satisfying stability, transitivity, and identity.
A presheaf on is a sheaf iff for every cover : (1) Locality — for all implies ; (2) Gluing — matching sections for all yield unique with .
Summary
| Concept | Things | Ways Between | Governing Condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Objects | Morphisms | Associative composition; identities |
| Functor | Categories | Functors | Preserves composition and identity |
| Natural transformation | Functors | Components | Naturality square commutes |
| Adjunction | Categories | Adjoint pair | Hom-set bijection is natural |
| Limit/Colimit | Diagrams | Universal objects | Unique factorization |
| Equivalence | Categories | Functor pairs | Round-trips ≅ identity |
| Sheaf | Presheaves | Restriction maps | Matching families glue uniquely |
Category theory provides a language for stating, precisely, when two ways of computing the same thing yield the same thing. That precision is what allows coherence to be checked rather than hoped for.