"Often people have wondered why there is no introductory text on category theory aimed at philosophers working in related areas. The answer is simple: what makes categories interesting and significant is their specific use for specific purposes. These uses and purposes, however, vary over many areas, both ""pure"", e.g., mathematical, foundational and logical, and ""applied"", e.g., applied to physics, biology and the nature and structure of mathematical models.
Borrowing from the title of Saunders Mac Lane's seminal work ""Categories for the Working Mathematician"", this book aims to bring the concepts of category theory to philosophers working in areas ranging from mathematics to proof theory to computer science to ontology, from to physics to biology to cognition, from mathematical modeling to the structure of scientific theories to the structure of the world.
Moreover, it aims to do this in a way that is accessible to non-specialists. Each chapter is written by either a category-theorist or a philosopher working in one of the represented areas, and in a way that builds on the concepts that are already familiar to philosophers working in these areas."
Edited by:
Elaine Landry (University of California)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 239mm,
Width: 164mm,
Spine: 34mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780198748991
ISBN 10: 019874899X
Pages: 486
Publication Date: 19 October 2017
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
1: Colin McLarty: The Roles of Set Theories in Mathematics 2: David Corfi eld: Reviving the Philosophy of Geometry 3: Michael Shulman: Homotopy Type Theory: A synthetic approach to higher equalities 4: Steve Awodey: Structuralism, Invariance, and Univalence 5: Michael Ernst: Category Theory and Foundations 6: Jean-Pierre Marquis: Canonical Maps 7: John Bell: Categorical Logic and Model Theory 8: Jean-Pierre Marquis: Unfolding FOLDS: A Foundational Framework for Abstract Mathematical Concepts 9: Kohei Kishida: Categories and Modalities 10: J.R.B Cockett and R.A.G Seely: Proof Theory of the Cut Rule 11: Samson Abramsky: Contextuality: At the Borders of Paradox 12: Bob Coecke and Aleks Kissinger: Categorical Quantum Mechanics I: Causal Quantum Processes 13: James Weatherall: Category Theory and the Foundations of Classical Spacetime Theories 14: Joachim Lambek: Six-dimensional Lorentz Category 15: Andrée Ehresmann: Applications of Categories to Biology and Cognition 16: David I. Spivak: Categories as Mathematical Models 17: David Hans Halvorson and Dimitris Tsementzis: Categories of Scientifi c Theories 18: Elaine Landry: Structural Realism and Category Mistakes
"Elaine Landry is professor of philosophy at the University of California, Davis. Her research spans three broad areas within Philosophy of Science: history and philosophy of mathematics, history and philosophy of science, and Plato's philosophy of mathematics. She is one of few philosophers who works on building bridges between all of these areas of research. Her papers are referenced in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (SEP) under the entries for both ""Category Theory"" and ""Structural Realism""."
Reviews for Categories for the Working Philosopher
important and interesting work. Landry has curated some wonderful essays on category theory for the working philosopher, and as long as one goes in with an understanding of the difficulty of the material, I can heartily recommend it to the philosopher wishing to know more about category theory and its applications. * Neil Barton, Philosophia Mathematica *
