Re: [Axiom-developer] Curiosities with Axiom mathematical structures

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

"Bill Page" <address@hidden> writes:

| On March 13, 2006 6:34 AM Ralf Hemmecke asked:
| > ... 
| > But here the question to our category theory experts:
| > Since Monoid is something like (*,1) would it make sense
| > to speak of a category (in the mathematical sense) of
| > 
| >    monoids that have * and 1 as their operations              
| >       (1)
| > 
| > ? Morphisms would respect 1 not just the identity element 
| > with respect to *. And for each morphism f we would have
| > f(a*b) = f(a)*f(b). Of course as operations the two * above
| > are different but in that category they have to have the same
| > name. (No idea whether this makes sense, but it seems that
| > this is the way as "Category" it is implemented in Axiom/Aldor.)
| > 
| > Then, of course, (N, +, 0) is not an object in the category 
| > given by (1).
| > 
| 
| I keep trying to answer these questions but I am not sure I
| would like to classify myself as an "expert" in category theory.
| :) But here goes ...
| 
| In category theory **Mon** (** means written in bold face font)
| consists of all monoids (as objects) and all monoid homomorphisms
| as morphisms. This does not say anything directly about what
| operation are present "inside" the objects of the category. 

Agreed.

| It is one of the goals of category theory to define what we mean
| by 'monoid' entirely in terms of the homomorphisms and perhaps
| statements about the existence of "special" objects).
| 
| It turns out that an individual object of **Mon** is also a
| category. It consists of a single object. The morphisms are words.
| There is an identity morphism that we can denote '1'. Composition
| is just the monoid operation. (N, +, 0) is such an object of
| **Mon**.

yes, but there are not very interesting categories :-)

| To make a connection with categories in Axiom, I would want to
| say that 'Monoid' represents the category **Mon** while
| 'Monoid(*$INT,1)' denotes an object of **Mon**. In fact both
| of these are categories in their own right.

Indeed.

| This brings up a design feature of Axiom and Aldor that I do
| not really like. Axiom and Aldor implement a strict two-level
| type class hierachy that distinquishes between categories and
| domains. Just as in category theory, I think this distinction
| is necessary in order to build mathematical constructs. But
| categories and domains should not remain strictly separate.
| There are many times when we might want to treat a category as
| a domain in some other category. We sometimes need to be able
| to "flatten" this hierachy and consider really only one kind
| of type.

I guess it depends on where we want to go.  But, you're right that
since Aldor already has Type:Type, the distinction between category
and domain becomes very artificial.

-- Gaby