Algebraic constructs (A,U), such as Vec, Grp, Mon, and Lat, can be fully described by the following data, called the monad associated with (A,U):

1. the functor T : Set → Set, where T = U ◦ F and F : Set → A is the associated free functor,

2. the natural transformation η : idSet → T formed by universal arrows, and

3. the natural transformation μ : T ◦ T → T given by the unique homomorphism μX : T(TX) → TX that extends idTX.

In these cases, there is a canonical concrete isomorphism K between (A,U) and the full concrete subcategory of Alg(T) consisting of those T-algebras TX →x X that satisfy the equations x ◦ ηX = idX and x ◦ Tx = x ◦ μX. The latter subcategory is called the Eilenberg-Moore category of the monad (T, η, μ). The above observation makes it possible, in the following four steps, to express the “degree of algebraic character” of arbitrary concrete categories that have free objects:

Step 1: With every concrete category (A,U) over X that has free objects (or, more generally, with every adjoint functor A →U X) one can associate, in an essentially unique way, an adjoint situation (η, ε) : F -|U : A → X.

Step 2: With every adjoint situation (η, ε) : F -|U : A → X one can associate a monad T = (T, η, μ) on X, where T = U ◦ F : X → X.

Step 3: With every monad T = (T, η, μ) on X one can associate a concrete subcategory of Alg(T) denoted by (XT, UT) and called the category of T-algebras.

Step 4:  With every concrete category (A,U) over X that has free objects one can associate a distinguished concrete functor (A,U) →K (XT , UT) into the associated category of T-algebras called the comparison functor for (A, U).

Concrete categories that are concretely isomorphic to a category of T-algebras for some monad T have a distinct “algebraic flavor”. Such categories (A,U) and their forgetful functors U are called monadic. It turns out that a concrete category (A, U ) is monadic iff it has free objects and its associated comparison functor (A,U) →K (XT , UT) is an isomorphism. Thus, for concrete categories (A,U) that have free objects, the associated comparison functor can be considered as a means of measuring the “algebraic character” of (A,U); and the associated category of T-algebras can be considered to be the “algebraic part” of (A,U). In particular,

(a) every finitary variety is monadic,

(b) the category TopGrp, considered as a concrete category

2. over Set, is not monadic; the associated comparison functor is the forgetful functor TopGrp → Grp, so that the construct Grp may be considered as the “algebraic part” of the construct TopGrp,

(c) the construct Top is not monadic; the associated comparison functor is the forgetful functor Top → Set itself, so that the construct Set may be considered as the “algebraic part” of the construct Top; hence the construct Top may be considered as having a trivial “algebraic part”.

Among constructs, monadicity captures the idea of “algebraicness” rather well. Unfortunately, however, the behavior of monadic categories in general is far from satisfactory. Monadic functors can fail badly to reflect properties of the base category (e.g., the existence of colimits or of suitable factorization structures), and they are not closed under composition.

# Of Magnitudes, Metrization and Materiality of Abstracto-Concrete Objects.

The possibility of introducing magnitudes in a certain domain of concrete material objects is by no means immediate, granted or elementary. First of all, it is necessary to find a property of such objects that permits to compare them, so that a quasi-serial ordering be introduced in their set, that is a total linear ordering not excluding that more than one object may occupy the same position in the series. Such an ordering must then undergo a metrization, which depends on finding a fundamental measuring procedure permitting the determination of a standard sample to which the unit of measure can be bound. This also depends on the existence of an operation of physical composition, which behaves additively with respect to the quantity which we intend to measure. Only if all these conditions are satisfied will it be possible to introduce a magnitude in a proper sense, that is a function which assigns to each object of the material domain a real number. This real number represents the measure of the object with respect to the intended magnitude. This condition, by introducing an homomorphism between the domain of the material objects and that of the positive real numbers, transforms the language of analysis (that is of the concrete theory of real numbers) into a language capable of speaking faithfully and truly about those physical objects to which it is said that such a magnitude belongs.

Does the success of applying mathematics in the study of the physical world mean that this world has a mathematical structure in an ontological sense, or does it simply mean that we find in mathematics nothing but a convenient practical tool for putting order in our representations of the world? Neither of the answers to this question is right, and this is because the question itself is not correctly raised. Indeed it tacitly presupposes that the endeavour of our scientific investigations consists in facing the reality of “things” as it is, so to speak, in itself. But we know that any science is uniquely concerned with a limited “cut” operated in reality by adopting a particular point of view, that is concretely manifested by adopting a restricted number of predicates in the discourse on reality. Several skilful operational manipulations are needed in order to bring about a homomorphism with the structure of the positive real numbers. It is therefore clear that the objects that are studied by an empirical theory are by no means the rough things of everyday experience, but bundles of “attributes” (that is of properties, relations and functions), introduced through suitable operational procedures having often the explicit and declared goal of determining a concrete structure as isomorphic, or at least homomorphic, to the structure of real numbers or to some other mathematical structure. But now, if the objects of an empirical theory are entities of this kind, we are fully entitled to maintain that they are actually endowed with a mathematical structure: this is simply that structure which we have introduced through our operational procedures. However, this structure is objective and real and, with respect to it, the mathematized discourse is far from having a purely conventional and pragmatic function, with the goal of keeping our ideas in order: it is a faithful description of this structure. Of course, we could never pretend that such a discourse determines the structure of reality in a full and exhaustive way, and this for two distinct reasons: In the first place, reality (both in the sense of the totality of existing things, and of the ”whole” of any single thing), is much richer than the particular “slide” that it is possible to cut out by means of our operational manipulations. In the second place, we must be aware that a scientific object, defined as a structured set of attributes, is an abstract object, is a conceptual construction that is perfectly defined just because it is totally determined by a finite list of predicates. But concrete objects are by no means so: they are endowed with a great deal of attributes of an indefinite variety, so that they can at best exemplify with an acceptable approximation certain abstract objects that are totally encoding a given set of attributes through their corresponding predicates. The reason why such an exemplification can only be partial is that the different attributes that are simultaneously present in a concrete object are, in a way, mutually limiting themselves, so that this object does never fully exemplify anyone of them. This explains the correct sense of such common and obvious remarks as: “a rigid body, a perfect gas, an adiabatic transformation, a perfect elastic recoil, etc, do not exist in reality (or in Nature)”. Sometimes this remark is intended to vehiculate the thesis that these are nothing but intellectual fictions devoid of any correspondence with reality, but instrumentally used by scientists in order to organize their ideas. This interpretation is totally wrong, and is simply due to a confusion between encoding and exemplifying: no concrete thing encodes any finite and explicit number of characteristics that, on the contrary, can be appropriately encoded in a concept. Things can exemplify several concepts, while concepts (or abstract objects) do not exemplify the attributes they encode. Going back to the distinction between sense on the one hand, and reference or denotation on the other hand, we could also say that abstract objects belong to the level of sense, while their exemplifications belong to the level of reference, and constitute what is denoted by them. It is obvious that in the case of empirical sciences we try to construct conceptual structures (abstract objects) having empirical denotations (exemplified by concrete objects). If one has well understood this elementary but important distinction, one is in the position of correctly seeing how mathematics can concern physical objects. These objects are abstract objects, are structured sets of predicates, and there is absolutely nothing surprising in the fact that they could receive a mathematical structure (for example, a structure isomorphic to that of the positive real numbers, or to that of a given group, or of an abstract mathematical space, etc.). If it happens that these abstract objects are exemplified by concrete objects within a certain degree of approximation, we are entitled to say that the corresponding mathematical structure also holds true (with the same degree of approximation) for this domain of concrete objects. Now, in the case of physics, the abstract objects are constructed by isolating certain ontological attributes of things by means of concrete operations, so that they actually refer to things, and are exemplified by the concrete objects singled out by means of such operations up to a given degree of approximation or accuracy. In conclusion, one can maintain that mathematics constitutes at the same time the most exact language for speaking of the objects of the domain under consideration, and faithfully mirrors the concrete structure (in an ontological sense) of this domain of objects. Of course, it is very reasonable to recognize that other aspects of these things (or other attributes of them) might not be treatable by means of the particular mathematical language adopted, and this may imply either that these attributes could perhaps be handled through a different available mathematical language, or even that no mathematical language found as yet could be used for handling them.

# Conjuncted: Occam’s Razor and Nomological Hypothesis. Thought of the Day 51.1.1

Conjuncted here, here and here.

A temporally evolving system must possess a sufficiently rich set of symmetries to allow us to infer general laws from a finite set of empirical observations. But what justifies this hypothesis?

This question is central to the entire scientific enterprise. Why are we justified in assuming that scientific laws are the same in different spatial locations, or that they will be the same from one day to the next? Why should replicability of other scientists’ experimental results be considered the norm, rather than a miraculous exception? Why is it normally safe to assume that the outcomes of experiments will be insensitive to irrelevant details? Why, for that matter, are we justified in the inductive generalizations that are ubiquitous in everyday reasoning?

In effect, we are assuming that the scientific phenomena under investigation are invariant under certain symmetries – both temporal and spatial, including translations, rotations, and so on. But where do we get this assumption from? The answer lies in the principle of Occam’s Razor.

Roughly speaking, this principle says that, if two theories are equally consistent with the empirical data, we should prefer the simpler theory:

Occam’s Razor: Given any body of empirical evidence about a temporally evolving system, always assume that the system has the largest possible set of symmetries consistent with that evidence.

Making it more precise, we begin by explaining what it means for a particular symmetry to be “consistent” with a body of empirical evidence. Formally, our total body of evidence can be represented as a subset E of H, i.e., namely the set of all logically possible histories that are not ruled out by that evidence. Note that we cannot assume that our evidence is a subset of Ω; when we scientifically investigate a system, we do not normally know what Ω is. Hence we can only assume that E is a subset of the larger set H of logically possible histories.

Now let ψ be a transformation of H, and suppose that we are testing the hypothesis that ψ is a symmetry of the system. For any positive integer n, let ψn be the transformation obtained by applying ψ repeatedly, n times in a row. For example, if ψ is a rotation about some axis by angle θ, then ψn is the rotation by the angle nθ. For any such transformation ψn, we write ψ–n(E) to denote the inverse image in H of E under ψn. We say that the transformation ψ is consistent with the evidence E if the intersection

E ∩ ψ–1(E) ∩ ψ–2(E) ∩ ψ–3(E) ∩ …

is non-empty. This means that the available evidence (i.e., E) does not falsify the hypothesis that ψ is a symmetry of the system.

For example, suppose we are interested in whether cosmic microwave background radiation is isotropic, i.e., the same in every direction. Suppose we measure a background radiation level of x1 when we point the telescope in direction d1, and a radiation level of x2 when we point it in direction d2. Call these events E1 and E2. Thus, our experimental evidence is summarized by the event E = E1 ∩ E2. Let ψ be a spatial rotation that rotates d1 to d2. Then, focusing for simplicity just on the first two terms of the infinite intersection above,

E ∩ ψ–1(E) = E1 ∩ E2 ∩ ψ–1(E1) ∩ ψ–1(E2).

If x1 = x2, we have E1 = ψ–1(E2), and the expression for E ∩ ψ–1(E) simplifies to E1 ∩ E2 ∩ ψ–1(E1), which has at least a chance of being non-empty, meaning that the evidence has not (yet) falsified isotropy. But if x1 ≠ x2, then E1 and ψ–1(E2) are disjoint. In that case, the intersection E ∩ ψ–1(E) is empty, and the evidence is inconsistent with isotropy. As it happens, we know from recent astronomy that x1 ≠ x2 in some cases, so cosmic microwave background radiation is not isotropic, and ψ is not a symmetry.

Our version of Occam’s Razor now says that we should postulate as symmetries of our system a maximal monoid of transformations consistent with our evidence. Formally, a monoid Ψ of transformations (where each ψ in Ψ is a function from H into itself) is consistent with evidence E if the intersection

ψ∈Ψ ψ–1(E)

is non-empty. This is the generalization of the infinite intersection that appeared in our definition of an individual transformation’s consistency with the evidence. Further, a monoid Ψ that is consistent with E is maximal if no proper superset of Ψ forms a monoid that is also consistent with E.

Occam’s Razor (formal): Given any body E of empirical evidence about a temporally evolving system, always assume that the set of symmetries of the system is a maximal monoid Ψ consistent with E.

What is the significance of this principle? We define Γ to be the set of all symmetries of our temporally evolving system. In practice, we do not know Γ. A monoid Ψ that passes the test of Occam’s Razor, however, can be viewed as our best guess as to what Γ is.

Furthermore, if Ψ is this monoid, and E is our body of evidence, the intersection

ψ∈Ψ ψ–1(E)

can be viewed as our best guess as to what the set of nomologically possible histories is. It consists of all those histories among the logically possible ones that are not ruled out by the postulated symmetry monoid Ψ and the observed evidence E. We thus call this intersection our nomological hypothesis and label it Ω(Ψ,E).

To see that this construction is not completely far-fetched, note that, under certain conditions, our nomological hypothesis does indeed reflect the truth about nomological possibility. If the hypothesized symmetry monoid Ψ is a subset of the true symmetry monoid Γ of our temporally evolving system – i.e., we have postulated some of the right symmetries – then the true set Ω of all nomologically possible histories will be a subset of Ω(Ψ,E). So, our nomological hypothesis will be consistent with the truth and will, at most, be logically weaker than the truth.

Given the hypothesized symmetry monoid Ψ, we can then assume provisionally (i) that any empirical observation we make, corresponding to some event D, can be generalized to a Ψ-invariant law and (ii) that unconditional and conditional probabilities can be estimated from empirical frequency data using a suitable version of the Ergodic Theorem.