On the classification of fibrations

Abstract

Classification questions are often about understanding components of a category. It is much more desirable however to be able to understand the entire homotopy type of this category and not just the set of its components. In this paper we prove that this is possible for the category of functors indexed a small category I which assign to any morphism in I a weak equivalence in a given model category. We identify the homotopy type of this category with the mapping space out of the nerve of I into the classifying space of the space of weak equivalences of values of these functors. We use it to reprove the classical classification of fibration theorem of Stasheff and its generalizations by Dwyer-Kan.