by F. William Lawvere (Author), Robert Rosebrugh (Author)
Advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students need a unified foundation for their study of geometry, analysis, and algebra. For the first time, this book uses categorical algebra to build such a foundation, starting from intuitive descriptions of mathematically and physically common phenomena and advancing to a precise specification of the nature of Categories of Sets. Set theory as the algebra of mappings is introduced and developed as a unifying basis for advanced mathematical subjects such as algebra, geometry, analysis, and combinatorics. The formal study evolves from general axioms that express universal properties of sums, products, mapping sets, and natural number recursion.