Context
Topos Theory
Background
Toposes
Internal Logic
Topos morphisms
Cohomology and homotopy
In higher category theory
Theorems
This page is to record the reference:
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Sketches of an Elephant – A Topos Theory Compendium
Oxford University Press (2002)
Volume 1: ISBN:9780198534259 562 pages
Volume 2: ISBN:9780198515982 716 pages
Volume 3: (long announced, yet to be published)
on topos theory.
The title refers to the strikingly different aspects of topos theory (such as functorial geometry versus mathematical logic) by alluding to the Indian folklore story of the blind men and the elephant (cf. E. J. Robinson’s Tales and Poems of South India), recalled in Johnstone’s preface like this:
“Four men, who had been blind from birth, wanted to know what an elephant was like; so they asked an elephant-driver for information. He led them to an elephant, and invited them to examine it; so one man felt the elephant’s leg, another its trunk, another its tail and the fourth its ear. Then they attempted to describe the elephant to one another. The first man said ”The elephant is like a tree“. ”No,“ said the second, ”the elephant is like a snake“. ”Nonsense!“ said the third, ”the elephant is like a broom“. ”You are all wrong,“ said the fourth, ”the elephant is like a fan“. And so they went on arguing amongst themselves, while the elephant stood watching them quietly.”
Contents
- A Toposes as Categories
- A1 Regular and cartesian closed categories
- A1.1 Preliminary assumptions
- A1.2 Cartesian categories
- A1.3 Regular categories
- A1.4 Coherent categories
- A1.5 Cartesian closed categories
- A1.6 Subobject classifiers
- A2 Toposes - basic theory
- A2.1 Definition and examples
- A2.2 The monadicity theorem
- A2.3 The Fundamental Theorem
- A2.4 Effectiveness, positivity and partial maps
- A2.5 Natural number objects
- A2.6 Quasitoposes
- A3 Allegories
- A3.1 Relations in regular categories
- A3.2 Allegories and tabulations
- A3.3 Splitting symmetric idempotents
- A3.4 Division allegories and power allegories
- A4 Geometric morphisms - basic theory
- B 2-Categorical Aspects of Topos Theory
- B1 Indexed categories and fibrations
- B1.1 Review of 2-categories
- B1.2 Indexed categories
- B1.3 Fibrations
- B1.4 Limits and colimits
- B1.5 Descent conditions and stacks
- B2 Internal and locally internal categories
- B2.1 Review of enriched categories
- B2.2 Locally internal categories
- B2.3 Internal categories and diagram categories
- B2.4 The indexed adjoint functor theorem
- B2.5 Discrete opfibrations
- B2.6 Filtered colimits
- B2.7 Internal profunctors
- B3 Toposes over a base
- C Toposes as Spaces
- C1 Sheaves on a locale
- C1.1 Frames and nuclei
- C1.2 Locales and spaces
- C1.3 Sheaves, local homeomorphisms and frame-valued sets
- C1.4 Continuous maps
- C1.5 Some topological properties of toposes
- C2 Sheaves on a site
- C2.1 Sites and coverages
- C2.2 The topos of sheaves
- C2.3 Morphisms of sites
- C2.4 Internal sites and pullbacks
- C2.5 Fibrations of sites
- C3 Classes of geometric morphisms
- D Toposes as theories
- D1 First-order categorical logic
- D1.1 First-order languages
- D1.2 Categorical semantics
- D1.3 First-order logic
- D1.4 Syntactic categories
- D1.5 Classical completeness
- D2 Sketches
- D2.1 The concept of sketch
- D2.2 Sketches and theories
- D2.3 Sketchable and accessible categories
- D2.4 Properties of model categories
- D3 Classifying toposes
- D3.1 Classifying toposes via syntactic sites
- D3.2 The object classifier
- D3.3 Coherent toposes
- D3.4 Boolean classifying toposes
- D3.5 Conceptual completeness
- D4 Higher-order logic
- D4.1 Interpreting higher-order logic in a topos
- D4.2 -Calculus and cartesian closed categories
- D4.3 Toposes as type theories
- D4.4 Predicative type theories
- D4.5 Axioms of choice and Booleanness
- D4.6 De Morgan’s law and the Gleason cover
- D4.7 Real numbers in a topos
- D5 Aspects of finiteness
- E Homotopy and Cohomology
- E1 Homotopy theory for toposes
- E1.1 Path-connectedness for locales
- E1.2 The fundamental groupoid via paths
- E1.3 The fundamental groupoid via coverings
- E1.4 Natural homotopy
- E2 Algebraic homotopy theory
- E2.1 Quillen model structures
- E2.2 Model structure for simplicial sets
- E2.3 Model structures for sheaves
- E2.4 Axiomatic theory of open maps
- E3 Cohomology theory
- F Toposes as Mathematical Universes
- F1 Synthetic differential geometry
- F1.1 Properties of the generic ring
- F1.2 Rings of line type
- F1.3 Well-adapted models
- F1.4 Tiny objects
- F1.5 Synthetic integration theory
- F1.6 Intrinsic infinitesimal
- F2 Realizability toposes
- F2.1 Schönfinkel algebras and assemblies
- F2.2 Realizability toposes
- F2.3 Modified Realizability
- F2.4 Synthetic domain theory
- F3 The free topos
- F3.1 The free topos as a mathematical universe
- F3.2 Disjunction and existence properties
- F3.3 Doing without the natural numbers
- F3.4 Recursive functions in the free topos
- F4 Topos theory and set theory
A Toposes as Categories
A1 Regular and cartesian closed categories
A1.1 Preliminary assumptions
A1.2 Cartesian categories
A1.3 Regular categories
A1.4 Coherent categories
A1.5 Cartesian closed categories
A1.6 Subobject classifiers
A2 Toposes - basic theory
A2.1 Definition and examples
-
Examples
A2.2 The monadicity theorem
A2.3 The Fundamental Theorem
A2.4 Effectiveness, positivity and partial maps
A2.5 Natural number objects
A2.6 Quasitoposes
A3 Allegories
A3.1 Relations in regular categories
A3.2 Allegories and tabulations
A3.3 Splitting symmetric idempotents
A3.4 Division allegories and power allegories
A4 Geometric morphisms - basic theory
A4.1 Definition and examples
B 2-Categorical Aspects of Topos Theory
B1 Indexed categories and fibrations
B1.1 Review of 2-categories
B1.2 Indexed categories
B1.3 Fibrations
B1.4 Limits and colimits
B1.5 Descent conditions and stacks
B2 Internal and locally internal categories
B2.1 Review of enriched categories
B2.2 Locally internal categories
B2.3 Internal categories and diagram categories
B2.4 The indexed adjoint functor theorem
B2.5 Discrete opfibrations
B2.6 Filtered colimits
B2.7 Internal profunctors
B3 Toposes over a base
B3.1 -Toposes as -indexed categories
B3.2 Diaconescu’s theorem
B3.3 Giraud’s theorem
B3.4 Colimits in Top
-
The paragraph before B3.4.8 refers to A4.1.13, but should probably refer instead to A4.1.15.
C Toposes as Spaces
C1 Sheaves on a locale
C1.1 Frames and nuclei
C1.2 Locales and spaces
C1.3 Sheaves, local homeomorphisms and frame-valued sets
C1.4 Continuous maps
(…)
C1.5 Some topological properties of toposes
C2 Sheaves on a site
C2.1 Sites and coverages
-
Lemma 2.1.7 is incorrect as stated: one should assume that is a sheaf for a (sifted) coverage. See here for details.
C2.2 The topos of sheaves
-
The statement that the induced coverage inherits closure properties requires assumptions on either the coverage or the subcategory. See the discussion here.
C2.3 Morphisms of sites
C2.4 Internal sites and pullbacks
…
C2.5 Fibrations of sites
…
C3 Classes of geometric morphisms
C3.1 Open maps
C3.2 Proper maps
C3.3 Locally connected morphisms
C3.4 Tidy morphisms
C3.5 Atomic morphisms
C3.6 Local maps
-
Example C3.6.15(e) says that is equivalent to , but the referred-to paper “Local maps of toposes” seems to say that it should be equivalent to instead.
D Toposes as theories
D1 First-order categorical logic
D1.1 First-order languages
D1.2 Categorical semantics
D1.3 First-order logic
D1.4 Syntactic categories
D1.5 Classical completeness
D2 Sketches
D2.1 The concept of sketch
D2.2 Sketches and theories
D2.3 Sketchable and accessible categories
D2.4 Properties of model categories
D3 Classifying toposes
D3.1 Classifying toposes via syntactic sites
D3.2 The object classifier
D3.3 Coherent toposes
D3.4 Boolean classifying toposes
D3.5 Conceptual completeness
D4 Higher-order logic
D4.1 Interpreting higher-order logic in a topos
D4.2 -Calculus and cartesian closed categories
D4.3 Toposes as type theories
D4.4 Predicative type theories
D4.5 Axioms of choice and Booleanness
- axiom of choice
- internally projective object— note that Lemma 4.5.3(iii) in the Elephant is not quite strong enough to imply (i) and (ii).
- excluded middle
D4.6 De Morgan’s law and the Gleason cover
D4.7 Real numbers in a topos
D5 Aspects of finiteness
D5.1 Natural number objects revisited
D5.2 Finite cardinals
D5.3 Finitary algebraic theories
D5.4 Kuratowski-finiteness
D5.5 Orbitals and numerals
E Homotopy and Cohomology
E1 Homotopy theory for toposes
E1.1 Path-connectedness for locales
E1.2 The fundamental groupoid via paths
E1.3 The fundamental groupoid via coverings
E1.4 Natural homotopy
E2 Algebraic homotopy theory
E2.1 Quillen model structures
E2.2 Model structure for simplicial sets
E2.3 Model structures for sheaves
E2.4 Axiomatic theory of open maps
E3 Cohomology theory
E3.1 Abelian groups and modules in a topos
E3.2 Cech cohomology
E3.3 Torsors and non-abelian cohomology
E3.4 Classifying toposes and classifying spaces
E3.5 Cohomological applications of descent theory
F Toposes as Mathematical Universes
F1 Synthetic differential geometry
F1.1 Properties of the generic ring
F1.2 Rings of line type
F1.3 Well-adapted models
F1.4 Tiny objects
F1.5 Synthetic integration theory
F1.6 Intrinsic infinitesimal
F2 Realizability toposes
F2.1 Schönfinkel algebras and assemblies
F2.2 Realizability toposes
F2.3 Modified Realizability
F2.4 Synthetic domain theory
F3 The free topos
F3.1 The free topos as a mathematical universe
F3.2 Disjunction and existence properties
F3.3 Doing without the natural numbers
F3.4 Recursive functions in the free topos
F4 Topos theory and set theory
F4.1 Internal sets in a topos
F4.2 Algebraic set theory
F4.3 Independence proofs via classifying toposes
F4.4 Independence of the axiom of choice
Last revised on June 23, 2025 at 23:29:22. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.