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In category theory, a branch of mathematics, an initial object of a category C is an object I in C such that for every object X in C, there exists precisely one morphism I → X. The dual notion is that of a terminal object (also called terminal element ): T is terminal if for every object X in C there exists exactly one morphism X → T .
The empty set serves as the initial object in Set with empty functions as morphisms. Every singleton is a terminal object, with the functions mapping all elements of the source sets to the single target element as morphisms. There are thus no zero objects in Set. The category Set is complete and co-complete.
Universal morphisms can also be thought more abstractly as initial or terminal objects of a comma category (see § Connection with comma categories, below). Universal properties occur almost everywhere in mathematics, and the use of the concept allows the use of general properties of universal properties for easily proving some properties that ...
Dually, a final coalgebra is a terminal object in the category of F-coalgebras. The finality provides a general framework for coinduction and corecursion. For example, using the same functor 1 + (−) as before, a coalgebra is defined as a set X together with a function f : X → (1 + X).
The terminal object is the terminal category or trivial category 1 with a single object and morphism. [2] The category Cat is itself a large category, and therefore not an object of itself. In order to avoid problems analogous to Russell's paradox one cannot form the “category of all categories”. But it is possible to form a quasicategory ...
The pointed singleton sets ({},) are both initial objects and terminal objects, [1] i.e. they are zero objects. [4]: 226 The category of pointed sets and pointed maps has both products and coproducts, but it is not a distributive category.
terminal 1. An object A is terminal (also called final) if there is exactly one morphism from each object to A; e.g., singletons in Set. It is the dual of an initial object. 2. An object A in an ∞-category C is terminal if (,) is contractible for every object B in C. thick subcategory
Examples of limits and colimits in Ring include: The ring of integers Z is an initial object in Ring. The zero ring is a terminal object in Ring. The product in Ring is given by the direct product of rings. This is just the cartesian product of the underlying sets with addition and multiplication defined component-wise.