Adjoint Functors and Heteromorphisms

Abstract

Category theory has foundational importance because it provides conceptual lenses to characterize what is important in mathematics. Originally the main lenses were universal mapping properties and natural transformations. In recent decades, the notion of adjoint functors has moved to center-stage as category theory's primary tool to characterize what is important in mathematics. Our focus here is to present a theory of adjoint functors. The basis for the theory is laid by first showing that the object-to-object "heteromorphisms" between the objects of different categories (e.g., insertion of generators as a set to group map) can be rigorously treated within category theory. The heteromorphic theory shows that all adjunctions arise from the birepresentations of the heteromorphisms between the objects of different categories.