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19 - Pullbacks and pushouts

from Part Two - Doing Category Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2022

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

Pullbacks and pushouts are more advanced universal properties, showing some more of the general features that are missing from the universal properties we’ve seen so far. We describe the general idea of a cone over a diagram, and define a limit over a diagram as a universal cone over that diagram, and show that products are in fact limits over a discrete diagram. We define pullbacks as limits over a particular diagram which includes some arrows. We unravel pullbacks in Set, and show that intersections are an example. We also describe the category in which pullbacks are terminal objects, and show how pullbacks can be used to define composable pairs of arrows in the definition of a category. We define pushouts as the dual of pullbacks, and then unravel that as a direct definition. We examine pushouts in Set and show that, given two sets, the square involving their intersection and their union is both a pullback and a pushout. We briefly discuss pushouts of topological spaces as a way of glueing spaces together.

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The Joy of Abstraction
An Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life
, pp. 270 - 289
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Pullbacks and pushouts
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.023
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  • Pullbacks and pushouts
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.023
Available formats
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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.

  • Pullbacks and pushouts
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.023
Available formats
×