- published: 22 Nov 2013
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Category theory is an area of study in mathematics that examines in an abstract way the properties of particular mathematical concepts, by formalising them as collections of objects and arrows (also called morphisms, although this term also has a specific, non category-theoretical sense), where these collections satisfy some basic conditions. Many significant areas of mathematics can be formalised as categories, and the use of category theory allows many intricate and subtle mathematical results in these fields to be stated, and proved, in a much simpler way than without the use of categories.
The most accessible example of a category is the category of sets, where the objects are sets and the arrows are functions from one set to another. However it is important to note that the objects of a category need not be sets nor the arrows functions; any way of formalising a mathematical concept such that it meets the basic conditions on the behaviour of objects and arrows is a valid category, and all the results of category theory will apply to it.