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1 - Categories: the idea

from Part One - Building up to Categories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2022

Eugenia Cheng
Affiliation:
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
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Summary

An overview of what the point of category theory is, without formality, and an overview of the contents of the book. We will present category theory as “the mathematics of mathematics”, so first we explain what aspects of mathematics we are focusing on. We present mathematics as starting from abstraction, as a way of elucidating analogies between situations, finding connections between them, and unifying them. Category theory is then a rigorous framework for making analogies and finding connections between different parts of mathematics. It focuses on relationships between things, rather than on intrinsic characteristics, and uses those relationships to put objects in context rather than treat them in isolation. Once the framework has been set up, we have, among other things, a way to express more nuanced notions of “sameness”, and a way to characterize things by the role they play in that context. Category theory also works at many different levels, so we can zoom in and out and study details close up, or broad contexts with more of an overview.

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Chapter
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The Joy of Abstraction
An Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life
, pp. 13 - 22
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Categories: the idea
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.003
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  • Categories: the idea
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Categories: the idea
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.003
Available formats
×