The Yoneda lemma
Statement
For every functor and object , the maps and above are mutually inverse, so as a genuine bijection of sets.
Why is it true?
This is what lets category theorists trade an infinite, hard-to-grasp family of natural transformations for a single concrete element of — every question about maps out of the representable presheaf collapses to a question about one set.
Proof sketch
We first check for every . Unwind the definitions: by the formula for , specialized to , . Since is a functor, it sends the identity morphism to the identity function on , so . Therefore , exactly as required — this direction uses nothing but the functor identity law.
Now we check the harder direction, for every natural transformation . Both sides are natural transformations , so it suffices to show their components agree at every object and every element .
Unwind using the formula for with : this equals .
Now invoke naturality of itself, in the form with and the other variable set to : taking in that naturality square gives exactly , i.e. , since .
Combining the last two displays: . Since and were arbitrary, the two natural transformations agree everywhere, so . Together with the first paragraph, and are mutually inverse bijections.
Topics that use this theorem
Step-by-step proofs
No step-by-step proof yet for this theorem.
References
- Saunders Mac Lane (1998). Categories for the Working Mathematician
- Emily Riehl (2016). Category Theory in Context
- Jacob Lurie (2009). Higher Topos Theory · arXiv:math/0608040