Towards a unified framework for decomposability of processes

Valtteri Lahtinen

Antti Stenvall

pp. 4411-4427

in: Cameron Buckner, Ellen Fridland (eds), Cognition, Synthese 194 (11), 2017.

Abstract

The concept of process is ubiquitous in science, engineering and everyday life. Category theory, and monoidal categories in particular, provide an abstract framework for modelling processes of many kinds. In this paper, we concentrate on sequential and parallel decomposability of processes in the framework of monoidal categories: We will give a precise definition, what it means for processes to be decomposable. Moreover, through examples, we argue that viewing parallel processes as coupled in this framework can be seen as a category mistake or a misinterpretation. We highlight the suitability of category theory for a structuralistic interpretation of mathematical modelling and argue that for appliers of mathematics, such as engineers, there is a pragmatic advantage from this.