category

category, in philosophy

category, philosophical term that literally means predication or assertion. It was first used by Aristotle, whose 10 categories formed a list of all the ways in which assertions can be made of a subject. Immanuel Kant's 12 categories constitute an exhaustive list of the a priori forms through which a person knows the phenomenal world. The term has also been used in many other senses by various philosophers.

---

category, in taxonomy

category, in taxonomy: see classification.

---

category

1. Metaphysics any one of the most basic classes into which objects and concepts can be analysed

2. 

a. (in the philosophy of Aristotle) any one of ten most fundamental modes of being, such as quantity, quality, and substance

b. (in the philosophy of Kant) one of twelve concepts required by human beings to interpret the empirical world

c. any set of objects, concepts, or expressions distinguished from others within some logical or linguistic theory by the intelligibility of a specific set of statements concerning them

---

category [′kad·ə‚gȯr·ē]

(mathematics)

A class of objects together with a set of morphisms for each pair of objects and a law of composition for morphisms; sets and functions form an important category, as do groups and homomorphisms.

(systematics)

In a hierarchical classification system, the level at which a particular group is ranked.

---

(theory)

category - A category K is a collection of objects, obj(K), and a collection of morphisms (or "arrows"), mor(K) such that 1. Each morphism f has a "typing" on a pair of objects A, B written f:A->B. This is read 'f is a morphism from A to B'. A is the "source" or "domain" of f and B is its "target" or "co-domain". 2. There is a partial function on morphisms called composition and denoted by an infix ring symbol, o. We may form the "composite" g o f : A -> C if we have g:B->C and f:A->B. 3. This composition is associative: h o (g o f) = (h o g) o f. 4. Each object A has an identity morphism id_A:A->A associated with it. This is the identity under composition, shown by the equations id__B o f = f = f o id__A. In general, the morphisms between two objects need not form a set (to avoid problems with Russell's paradox). An example of a category is the collection of sets where the objects are sets and the morphisms are functions. Sometimes the composition ring is omitted. The use of capitals for objects and lower case letters for morphisms is widespread but not universal. Variables which refer to categories themselves are usually written in a script font.