Formal Definition
We define the elementary language of category theory as the two-sorted first order language with objects and morphisms as distinct sorts, together with the relations of an object being the source or target of a morphism and a symbol for composing two morphisms.
Let σ be any statement in this language. We form the dual σop as follows:
- Interchange each occurrence of "source" in σ with "target".
- Interchange the order of composing morphisms. That is, replace each occurrence of with
Informally, these conditions state that the dual of a statement is formed by reversing arrows and compositions.
Duality is the observation that σ is true for some category C if and only if σop is true for Cop.
Read more about this topic: Dual (category Theory)
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