Induction, Coinduction, and Fixed Points in Order Theory, Set Theory, Type Theory, First-Order Logic, and Category Theory: A Concise Comparative Survey Moez A. AbdelGawad
[email protected] Abstract In this survey article (which hitherto is an ongoing work-in-progress) we present the for- mulation of the induction and coinduction principles using the language and conventions of each of order theory, set theory, programming languages’ type theory, first-order logic, and category theory, for the purpose of examining some of the similarities and, more significantly, the dissimilarities between these various mathematical disciplines, and hence shed some light on the precise relation between these disciplines. Towards that end, in this article we discuss plenty of related concepts, such as fixed points, pre-fixed points, post-fixed points, inductive sets and types, coinductive sets and types, algebras and coalgebras. We conclude the survey by hinting at the possibility of a more abstract and unified treatment that uses concepts from category theory such as monads and comonads. 1 Introduction Fixed points and concepts related to them, such as induction and coinduction, have applications in numerous scientific fields. These mathematical concepts have applications also in social sciences, and even in common culture, usually under disguise.1 Fixed points, induction and coinduction have been formulated and studied in various subfields of mathematics, usually using different vocabulary in each field. Fields for studying these concepts, formally, include order theory, set theory, programming languages (PL) type theory2, first-order logic, and category theory. In this article—which started as a brief self-note (now summarized in §7)—we compare the various formulations of these concepts by presenting how these concepts, and many related ones— such as pre-fixed points, post-fixed points, inductive sets/types, coinductive sets/types, algebras, and arXiv:1812.10026v9 [cs.LO] 28 Feb 2019 coalgebras—are defined in each of these mathematical subfields.