Category Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
From the entry:
Category theory has come to occupy a central position in contemporary mathematics and theoretical computer science, and is also applied to mathematical physics. Roughly, it is a general mathematical theory of structures and of systems of structures. As category theory is still evolving, its functions are correspondingly developing, expanding and multiplying. At minimum, it is a powerful language, or conceptual framework, allowing us to see the universal components of a family of structures of a given kind, and how structures of different kinds are interrelated. Category theory is both an interesting object of philosophical study, and a potentially powerful formal tool for philosophical investigations of concepts such as space, system, and even truth. It can be applied to the study of logical systems in which case category theory is called “categorical doctrines” at the syntactic, proof-theoretic, and semantic levels. Category theory is an alternative to set theory as a foundation for mathematics. As such, it raises many issues about mathematical ontology and epistemology. Category theory thus affords philosophers and logicians much to use and reflect upon.
Several tweets contained “category theory” and links to this entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The entry was substantially revised as of October 3, 2014, but I don’t see a mechanism that allows discovery of changes to the prior text.
For a PDF version of this entry (or other entries), join the Friends of the SEP Society. The cost is quite modest and the SEP is an effort that merits your support.
As a reading/analysis exercise, treat the entries in SEP as updates to Copleston‘s History of Philosophy:
A History of Philosophy 1: Greek and Rome
A History of Philosophy 2: Medieval
A History of Philosophy 3: Late Medieval and Renaissance
A History of Philosophy 4: Modern: Descartes to Leibniz
A History of Philosophy 5: Modern British, Hobbes to Hume
A History of Philosophy 6: Modern: French Enlightenment to Kant
A History of Philosophy 7: Modern Post-Kantian Idealiststo Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
A History of Philosophy 8: Modern: Empiricism, Idealism, Pragmatism in Britain and America
A History of Philosophy 9: Modern: French Revolution to Sartre, Camus, Lévi-Strauss
Enjoy!