Logic and Foundations Commons^™

A Coherent Proof Of Mac Lane's Coherence Theorem, Luke Trujillo

HMC Senior Theses

Mac Lane’s Coherence Theorem is a subtle, foundational characterization of monoidal categories, a categorical concept which is now an important and popular tool in areas of pure mathematics and theoretical physics. Mac Lane’s original proof, while extremely clever, is written somewhat confusingly. Many years later, there still does not exist a fully complete and clearly written version of Mac Lane’s proof anywhere, which is unfortunate as Mac Lane’s proof provides very deep insight into the nature of monoidal categories. In this thesis, we provide brief introductions to category theory and monoidal categories, and we offer a precise, clear development of …