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Conceptual Mathematics

Conceptual Mathematics

Conceptual Mathematics

A First Introduction to Categories
2nd Edition
F. William Lawvere, State University of New York, Buffalo
Stephen H. Schanuel, State University of New York, Buffalo
August 2009
Available
Paperback
9780521719162

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    In the last 60 years, the use of the notion of category has led to a remarkable unification and simplification of mathematics. Conceptual Mathematics introduces this tool for the learning, development, and use of mathematics, to beginning students and also to practising mathematical scientists. This book provides a skeleton key that makes explicit some concepts and procedures that are common to all branches of pure and applied mathematics. The treatment does not presuppose knowledge of specific fields, but rather develops, from basic definitions, such elementary categories as discrete dynamical systems and directed graphs; the fundamental ideas are then illuminated by examples in these categories. This second edition provides links with more advanced topics of possible study. In the new appendices and annotated bibliography the reader will find concise introductions to adjoint functors and geometrical structures, as well as sketches of relevant historical developments.

    • Authors are world class authorities on the subject
    • Only text at this elementary level - requires only high-school algebra
    • Applications in pure and applied mathematics, computer science, physics, linguistics, logic and philosophy

    Reviews & endorsements

    "This outstanding book on category theory is in a class by itself. It should be consulted at various stages of one’s mastery of this fundamental body of knowledge."
    George Hacken, reviews.com

    See more reviews

    Product details

    August 2009
    Paperback
    9780521719162
    404 pages
    244 × 171 × 25 mm
    0.78kg
    575 b/w illus. 12 tables 213 exercises
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Foreword
    • Note to the reader
    • Preview
    • Part I. The Category of Sets:
    • 1. Sets, maps, composition
    • Part II. The Algebra of Composition:
    • 2. Isomorphisms
    • Part III. Categories of Structured Sets:
    • 3. Examples of categories
    • Part IV. Elementary Universal Mapping Properties:
    • 4. Universal mapping properties
    • Part V. Higher Universal Mapping Properties:
    • 5. Map objects
    • 6. The contravariant parts functor
    • 7. The components functor
    • Appendix 1. Geometry of figures and algebra of functions
    • Appendix 2. Adjoint functors
    • Appendix 3. The emergence of category theory within mathematics
    • Appendix 4. Annotated bibliography.
      Authors
    • F. William Lawvere , State University of New York, Buffalo

      F. William Lawvere is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the State University of New York. He has previously held positions at Reed College, the University of Chicago and the City University of New York, as well as visiting Professorships at other institutions worldwide. At the 1970 International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice, Prof. Lawvere delivered an invited lecture in which he introduced an algebraic version of topos theory which united several previously 'unrelated' areas in geometry and in set theory; over a dozen books, several dozen international meetings, and hundreds of research papers have since appeared, continuing to develop the consequences of that unification.

    • Stephen H. Schanuel , State University of New York, Buffalo

      Stephen H. Schanuel is a Professor of Mathematics at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has previously held positions at Johns Hopkins University, Institute for Advanced Study and Cornell University, as well as lecturing at institutions in Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Colombia, Canada, Ireland, and Australia. Best known for Schanuel's Lemma in homological algebra (and related work with Bass on the beginning of algebraic K–theory), and for Schanuel's Conjecture on algebraic independence and the exponential function, his research thus wanders from algebra to number theory to analysis to geometry and topology.