module index where
1Lab🔗
This website is an experiment in discoverable formalisation: an extensive library of formalised mathematics, presented as an explorable reference resource. Our implementation of a mathematical library, using literate source code, has allowed us a dual approach to the explanation of mathematical concepts: the code and the prose are complementary, and everyone is presented with the opportunity to choose their own balance between the rigid formalisation and the intuitive explanations.
Rather than yet another category theory library, the 1Lab
aims to be an accessible introduction to structuralist mathematics,
formalised in the setting of homotopy type theory, using a theorem
prover to check and structure our work. As a result of using Agda,
everything we mention knows its own definition, whether we are
talking about a specific principle (like univalence
), a big idea (like
monoidal
categories), or a punctual observation (like surjections are
quotient maps).
The code snippet above, a re-statement of univalence
, demonstrates how to
explore the formalisation. Every mention of a non-local name in the code
above is a link to its definition (try clicking on path→equiv
!) — on hover, you’re
presented with a pop-up of their types. Everything we have formalised is
accompanied by prose, just like this — which will contain links to the
higher-level concepts involved in the proof, such as universes, path types, and equivalences.
We have developed a sizeable library of formalised mathematics, centered around category theory and “adjacent” fields: abstract algebra, order theory, logic, and synthetic homotopy theory. Unlike some of the other resources listed below, the 1Lab takes an opinionated stance on its type-theoretic foundations: we use cubical type theory (in the style of Cohen et al. (2016)), and freely assume propositional resizing.
Since the size of the library may make jumping into a particular topic slightly daunting, we have put a lot of effort into making entry points accessible as well. The simplest way to find something is by searching for it. You can hit Ctrl+K/Cmd+K to bring up the search prompt, as long as you have JavaScript enabled. Anything that has a name can be searched for:
Pages can be looked up by their module name (e.g. Algebra.Ring), or by their title (e.g. Abelian groups). These are organised hierarchically like an ordinary software library: Foundational results are under
1Lab
, a variety of data types are underData
, abstract algebra is underAlgebra
, category theory is underCat
, etc.Sections within a page can be looked up by their title, like The canonical self-indexing > As a fibration. Keep in mind that the fuzzy matching means that writing out the prefix is entirely optional — it’s only displayed in the search results so you know where you’ll be taken.
Particular concepts can be looked up by a number of specific shorthands, e.g. adjunctions compose or composition of adjunctions.
Every definition in the library can be looked up by its identifier, like
Precategory
.
While the library’s size makes it infeasible to curate a list of every single page, we have made an attempt to catalogue results we have formalised and which appear in standard reference materials, essentially by enumerating each book’s index:
The HoTT page correlates with the book Homotopy Type Theory: Univalent Foundations of Mathematics (2013), which is also referred throughout the 1Lab as the HoTT book;
The Borceux page correlates with the first volume of the Handbook of Categorical Algebra (1994).
The Elephant page correlates with Johnstone’s Sketches of an Elephant: A Topos Theory Compendium (2002).
Since both of these pages are also indexed for searching, you can navigate to a specific section in these book indices by searching for their names or section numbers: For example, try searching for the Freudenthal suspension theorem or for section A1.3.
Getting involved🔗
Our purpose is to make univalent mathematics accessible to everyone who is interested, regardless of cultural background, age, educational background, ethnicity, gender identity, or gender expression. HoTT is for everyone, and we are committed to fostering a kind, welcoming environment.
Even though the 1Lab is maintained primarily by the authors, it is first and foremost a community project. The actual formalisation work takes place on GitHub, but ongoing discussion happens on Discord. We welcome all contributions, though we would kindly ask that anyone submitting a substantial change discuss it on Discord first.
We accept contributions in all areas of mathematics, not just the ones which already feature, or the ones listed above. Our lack of results in real analysis is not because real analysis is forbidden, but rather just because it’s not the area of expertise of any of the authors. We would be happy to help anyone to formalise and write about their favourite subject, but do keep in mind that developing all of the supporting theory might be a significant undertaking.
Technology🔗
The 1Lab would not be possible without a myriad other free and open-source projects. In addition to our dearest proof assistant Agda — no part of which is distributed — we would like to mention the following open-source projects for their fundamental importance:
Fonts: Our monospace typeface is Julia Mono (license), chosen for its excellent unicode coverage. The textual content can be read in either Inria Sans (license) or EB Garamond (license), according to the user’s preference. All of these fonts are distributed under the terms of the SIL Open Font License, v1.1.
Prose: We write our textual content in Markdown, which is rendered using Pandoc, then put through a variety of filters to implement things like diagrams, folding equations, highlighted divs/details, etc. Despite our extensive use of Pandoc, no part of the project is distributed.
Mathematics: We type-set our mathematics, at build-time, using KaTeX. Even though the rendering is done ahead-of-time, we distribute their CSS and fonts. KaTeX is distributed under the terms of the MIT license: a copy is available here.
Iconography: Our favicon is the ice-cube emoji from Noto Emoji, distributed under the terms of the Apache License, 2.0; a copy is available here. Other icons come from octicons, distributed under the terms of the MIT license, which you can find here.
Diagrams: Our diagrams are created using quiver, and rendered to SVG using LaTeX and pdftocairo, which is part of the Poppler project. No part of these projects is redistributed.
Web: All of the JavaScript we ship is free and open source software, and most of it is developed in-house — you can find it on our GitHub. We use the fast-fuzzy library to power the search dialog, which is distributed under the terms of the ISC license, available here.
None of our content relies on JavaScript to function, but enabling it does improve the experience — allowing you control over theming, use of the search function, exploring the link graph, type-on-hover, and more. If you have JS disabled for privacy concerns, rest assured: The 1Lab does not track you, or collect any sort of personally identifying information.
Other resources🔗
This is a list of freely available, online resources on homotopy type theory, whose differing presentations (and axiomatics) might be more inviting to particular readers. Please check them out!
The aforementioned Homotopy Type Theory: Univalent Foundations of Mathematics (2013) is split down the middle between being an introduction to the practice of homotopy type theory, and to the beginnings of the applications of univalence to category theory, homotopy theory, set theory and real analysis.
Egbert Rijke’s more recent Introduction to Homotopy Type Theory (2022) is a more comprehensive introduction to the practice of dependent type theory in general, and homotopy type theory in particular, with no pre-existing familiarity assumed; it also includes applications of univalence to algebra, combinatorics, and homotopy theory.
Martin Escardó’s Introduction to Univalent Foundations of Mathematics with Agda applies a theorem prover to the production of lecture notes, which are sequentially structured, unlike the 1Lab. Escardó takes a rather unusual approach to formalisation in Agda, using it as a proof assistant for a very basic (“spartan”) type theory. His lecture notes include an introduction to working practically with type theory in its purest form.
The agda-unimath library is a project very similar to the 1Lab, though using axiomatic homotopy type theory, rather than the cubical type theory which we prefer. It is currently maintained by Egbert Rijke, Fredrik Bakke, and Vojtěch Štěpančík, and contains a formalisation of a wide variety of topics in undergraduate mathematics, and a considerable selection of novel results in the field of univalent combinatorics.
The TypeTopology library, primarily by Escardó, but featuring collaborations, functions primarily as a formalisation of novel results in constructive mathematics. Its authors describe it as a mathematical blackboard; rather than employing a proof assistant to record and verify existing knowledge, its authors use Agda primarily to assist with discovering new ideas.
Highlighted topics🔗
While we can not maintain a list of every single page in the 1Lab, the following pages define some of the central concepts the fields we have formalised. They serve as great jumping-off points to explore them!
Type theory🔗
The modules under the 1Lab
namespace serve to bootstrap
our type theory. They provide the definitions of primitive concepts
required for Agda to function, and a firm conceptual basis which allows
us to develop higher-level mathematics. The highlights here are the key
modules leading up to the proof of the univalence principle:
open import 1Lab.Type -- Basics of type universes open import 1Lab.Path -- The key idea in cubical type theory open import 1Lab.HLevel -- The hierarchy of homotopy n-types open import 1Lab.Equiv -- Equivalences, the notion of sameness for types open import 1Lab.Univalence -- The proof of univalence, and a few equivalents
Metaprogramming🔗
To support the rest of the formalisation, we engage not only in writing mathematics, but also metamathematics. These are tactics, which teach Agda to handle more and more of what is trivial, allowing us to focus on what is truly interesting. These pages are primarily interesting for those interested in the use of Agda — therefore, they are more code than prose.
open import 1Lab.Reflection.HLevel -- Some h-level proofs are mechanically derivable from the structure -- of a type --- this tactic discharges those proof obligations. open import 1Lab.Extensionality -- Given only a type, this type computes a "best" extensional equality -- to use at a given point of the formalisation, narrowing an identity -- to the data that matters. open import 1Lab.Reflection.Induction -- While Agda natively supports inductive types and pattern matching, -- it's often useful to have explicit elimination principles. This -- tactic automatically writes them.
Category theory🔗
The 1Lab was originally a project by one of the authors to learn category theory by formalising it; unsurprisingly, this attracted other category theorists, and this is the most comprehensive part of the library. These files set up the core of the subject:
open import Cat.Base -- Core definitions open import Cat.Univalent -- Univalent categories open import Cat.Functor.Base -- Functor categories open import Cat.Functor.Adjoint -- Adjoint functors open import Cat.Functor.Equivalence -- Equivalences of categories
While there’s way too much category theory to list, these are some of the cooler things we have formalised.
Bicategory theory🔗
Try as we might, univalent mathematics do not let us consider a 1-category of general categories: we would have to focus on the strict categories, which are quite rare in comparison to the univalent categories. However, we can fit them into a higher-dimensional structure: a bicategory.
open import Cat.Bi.Base -- The basic definitions
In addition to their importance as an organizational principle, we can prove a theorem that exposes a funny circularity in category theory: a strict category is given by a monad in the bicategory of spans of sets.
open import Cat.Bi.Instances.Spans open import Cat.Bi.Diagram.Monad.Spans
Cartesian closed categories🔗
To a type theorist, a Cartesian closed category is exactly a simply-typed lambda calculus. To cement this connection, we have an implementation of normalisation-by-evaluation for STLC, whose correctness is established relative to its semantics in an arbitrary CCC:
open import Cat.CartesianClosed.Lambda
Regular categories🔗
Regular categories are often defined as those which have a well-behaved calculus of relations — we have a proof that the relations in a regular category form a bicategory, and so have associative and unital composition.
open import Cat.Regular -- Regular categories open import Cat.Bi.Instances.Relations -- The bicategory of relations in a regular category
A related concept is that of allegories, which, rather than axiomatising the structure which leads to a calculus of relations, axiomatises the behaviour of the relations directly:
open import Cat.Allegory.Base -- Allegories open import Cat.Allegory.Instances.Mat -- The allegory of matrices with values in a frame
Monoidal categories🔗
A monoidal category is the higher-dimensional counterpart of a monoid — a category with an associative and unital composition functor. These are equivalently the in a bicategory.
open import Cat.Monoidal.Base
Monoidal categories turn out to involve quite a lot of data — constructing them in a proof assistant is onerous. In addition to the first formalisation of the Day convolution in a type-theoretic proof assistant, we also have a proof that every category with finite products is monoidal.
open import Cat.Monoidal.Instances.Day open import Cat.Monoidal.Instances.Cartesian
Internal category theory🔗
We can internalise the construction of strict categories, beyond to any category with sufficient structure — this results in internal category theory.
open import Cat.Internal.Base
Displayed categories🔗
A displayed category (over is a type-theoretic repackaging of the data of a category and a functor Since quite a few structures can be presented as categories-with-functors, displayed categories are used quite a lot in the 1Lab in an organizational role.
open import Cat.Displayed.Base -- Displayed categories open import Cat.Displayed.Univalence.Thin -- As categories of structured objects
However, displayed categories really come into their own to formalise the concept of fibration — a much nicer presentation of a functorial family of categories over
open import Cat.Displayed.Cartesian -- Definition of fibrations open import Cat.Displayed.Cartesian.Indexing -- From fibrations to families
These families of categories arise naturally in the study of type theories, and of logics as a special case.
open import Cat.Displayed.Comprehension -- An axiomatisation of context extension open import Cat.Displayed.Doctrine -- An axiomatisation of regular logic
Examples🔗
The following examples of displayed categories are particularly notable to motivate the subject.
open import Cat.Displayed.Instances.Slice -- Canonical self-indexing open import Cat.Displayed.Instances.Family -- Family fibration open import Cat.Displayed.Instances.Subobjects -- Fibration of subobjects
Fibrations are also intimately connected with the study of internal categories, in particular through the construction of the externalisation.
open import Cat.Displayed.Instances.Externalisation
Order theory🔗
The study of sets equipped with a notion of precendence, or containment; while the theory of partial orders is naturally seen as a restriction of the theory of categories, formalising these concepts separately leads to cleaner mathematics.
open import Order.Base -- Definitions
By asking for the existence of operations assigning meets and joins, we can use posets to formalise structures in both logic and geometry: frames and lattices.
open import Order.Frame open import Order.Lattice
Domain theory🔗
Domain theory is the study of posets that are complete under various classes of least upper bounds. Domains naturally lead to formalisations of partiality, which makes them important tools in the semantics of programming languages.
open import Order.DCPO -- Directed-complete partial orders open import Order.DCPO.Free -- Free DCPOs and free pointed DCPOs open import Order.DCPO.Pointed -- Pointed directed-complete partial orders
Synthetic homotopy theory🔗
Synthetic homotopy theory is the name given to the application of type theory to the study of homotopy invariants of spaces — in fancier words, for speaking to in their own terms.
open import Homotopy.Base -- Basic definitions open import Homotopy.Connectedness -- Connected types
The most famous result in synthetic homotopy theory is the fundamental group of the circle, defined as a higher inductive type. But we also have a formalisation that any group is the fundamental group of a specific space:
open import Homotopy.Space.Circle open import Homotopy.Space.Delooping
We have also recorded a few facts about the following spaces:
open import Homotopy.Space.Torus -- The torus open import Homotopy.Space.Sphere -- Spheres of arbitrary dimension open import Homotopy.Space.Sinfty -- The infinite-dimensional sphere open import Homotopy.Space.Suspension -- Suspensions
Algebra🔗
Formalisations of some of the basic notions in abstract algebra, such as monoids, groups, rings, and modules over these. Groups, rings, and modules have further theory developed, but even then, we freely admit that no deep results in algebra are formalised here.
open import Algebra.Monoid open import Algebra.Group open import Algebra.Ring open import Algebra.Ring.Module
Group theory🔗
Groups are an abstraction of the idea of symmetry — which is central to homotopy type theory. See also synthetic homotopy theory above.
open import Algebra.Group.Free -- Free groups open import Algebra.Group.Action -- Group actions open import Algebra.Group.Cayley -- Cayley's theorem open import Algebra.Group.Concrete -- Groups as higher types
We also have a few results about the large-scale categorical structure of the category of abelian (or commutative) groups:
open import Algebra.Group.Ab -- Abelian groups, and the category Ab open import Algebra.Group.Ab.Tensor -- Tensor product of abelian groups open import Algebra.Group.Ab.Abelianisation -- Abelianisations
Recent additions🔗
These are the ten most recent commits to the repository, which introduced new modules. Looking through these would be a good way to find which of the topics above are currently seeing activity!
References
- Borceux, Francis. 1994. Handbook of Categorical Algebra. Vol. 1. Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Its Applications. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511525858.
- Cohen, Cyril, Thierry Coquand, Simon Huber, and Anders Mörtberg. 2016. “Cubical Type Theory: A Constructive Interpretation of the Univalence Axiom.” https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.02108.
- Johnstone, Peter T. 2002. Sketches of an Elephant: a Topos Theory Compendium. Oxford Logic Guides. New York, NY: Oxford Univ. Press. https://cds.cern.ch/record/592033.
- Rijke, Egbert. 2022. “Introduction to Homotopy Type Theory.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.11082.
- Univalent Foundations Program, The. 2013. Homotopy Type Theory: Univalent Foundations of Mathematics. Institute for Advanced Study: https://homotopytypetheory.org/book.