Category Theory has developed rapidly. This book aims to present those ideas and methods which can now be effectively used by Mathe­ maticians working in a variety of other fields of Mathematical research. This occurs at several levels. On the first level, categories provide a convenient conceptual language, based on the notions of category, functor, natural transformation, contravariance, and functor category. These notions are presented, with appropriate examples, in Chapters I and II. Next comes the fundamental idea of an adjoint pair of functors. This appears in many substantially equivalent forms: That of universal construction, that of direct and inverse limit, and that of pairs offunctors with a natural isomorphism between corresponding sets of arrows. All these forms, with their interrelations, are examined in Chapters III to V. The slogan is "Adjoint functors arise everywhere". Alternatively, the fundamental notion of category theory is that of a monoid -a set with a binary operation of multiplication which is associative and which has a unit; a category itself can be regarded as a sort of general­ ized monoid. Chapters VI and VII explore this notion and its generaliza­ tions. Its close connection to pairs of adjoint functors illuminates the ideas of universal algebra and culminates in Beck's theorem characterizing categories of algebras; on the other hand, categories with a monoidal structure (given by a tensor product) lead inter alia to the study of more convenient categories of topological spaces.

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I. Categories, Functors and Natural Transformations.- 1. Axioms for Categories.- 2. Categories.- 3. Functors.- 4. Natural Transformations.- 5. Monics, Epis, and Zeros.- 6. Foundations.- 7. Large Categories.- 8. Hom-sets.- II. Constructions on Categories.- 1. Duality.- 2. Contravariance and Opposites.- 3. Products of Categories.- 4. Functor Categories.- 5. The Category of All Categories.- 6. Comma Categories.- 7. Graphs and Free Categories.- 8. Quotient Categories.- III. Universals and Limits.- 1. Universal Arrows.- 2. The Yoneda Lemma.- 3. Coproducts and Colimits.- 4. Products and Limits.- 5. Categories with Finite Products.- 6. Groups in Categories.- IV. Adjoints.- 1. Adjunctions.- 2. Examples of Adjoints.- 3. Reflective Subcategories.- 4. Equivalence of Categories.- 5. Adjoints for Preorders.- 6. Cartesian Closed Categories.- 7. Transformations of Adjoints.- 8. Composition of Adjoints.- V. Limits.- 1. Creation of Limits.- 2. Limits by Products and Equalizers.- 3. Limits with Parameters.- 4. Preservation of Limits.- 5. Adjoints on Limits.- 6. Freyd's Adjoint Functor Theorem.- 7. Subobjects and Generators.- 8. The Special Adjoint Functor Theorem.- 9. Adjoints in Topology.- VI. Monads and Algebras.- 1. Monads in a Category.- 2. Algebras for a Monad.- 3. The Comparison with Algebras.- 4. Words and Free Semigroups.- 5. Free Algebras for a Monad.- 6. Split Coequalizers.- 7. Beck's Theorem.- 8. Algebras are T-algebras.- 9. Compact Hausdorff Spaces.- VII. Monoids.- 1. Monoidal Categories.- 2. Coherence.- 3. Monoids.- 4. Actions.- 5. The Simplicial Category.- 6. Monads and Homology.- 7. Closed Categories.- 8. Compactly Generated Spaces.- 9. Loops and Suspensions.- VIII. Abelian Categories.- 1. Kernels and Cokernels.- 2. Additive Categories.- 3. Abelian Categories.- 4. Diagram Lemmas.- IX. Special Limits.- 1. Filtered Limits.- 2. Interchange of Limits.- 3. Final Functors.- 4. Diagonal Naturality.- 5. Ends.- 6. Coends.- 7. Ends with Parameters.- 8. Iterated Ends and Limits.- X. Kan Extensions.- 1. Adjoints and Limits.- 2. Weak Universality.- 3. The Kan Extension.- 4. Kan Extensions as Coends.- 5. Pointwise Kan Extensions.- 6. Density.- 7. All Concepts are Kan Extensions.- Table of Terminology.