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17 - Duality

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

We can regard all arrows in a category as pointing the other way, and this gives us the dual category. One advantage is that we immediately get a dual version of every construction and every theorem. We begin by exploring some small examples such as categories of factors, and turn all the arrows round to see what the resulting structure looks like. Thus motivated, we make the definition of dual category, and explain that any categorical structure has a dual version which is given by placing that structure in the dual category. We show that in this sense monics and epics are dual, and that isomorphisms are self-dual. We also describe the concept of duals of results, which are found by placing the result in the dual category. We show that the composite of two monics is monic, and that the dual result is that the composite of two epics is epic; we also consider the converse. We show that terminal and initial objects are dual. Finally, we briefly mention how the notion of dual category comes from symmetry in the definition of a category, more easily seen from the definition as an underlying graph with extra structure.

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The Joy of Abstraction
An Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life
, pp. 226 - 236
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Duality
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.021
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  • Duality
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.021
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.

  • Duality
  • Eugenia Cheng, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Book: The Joy of Abstraction
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108769389.021
Available formats
×