Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2006/iii/paper-24/1/ii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 iii Paper 24 1 ii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Take the category of ordinals in reverse order , with a unique arrow exactly when , and the unique functorBoth categories are complete categories. A small limit in the ordinal category is the supremum of the ordinals occurring in the diagram; the empty supremum is , its terminal object. The functor preserves all these categorical limits, and both categories are locally small categories.
A left adjoint would select an initial object of , meaning an ordinal at least as large as every ordinal. No such object exists. More specifically, any set of candidate ordinals has an upper bound , and none of its members maps to . Thus the solution-set condition fails. This example isolates the genuine smallness requirement in the general adjoint functor theorem.
New to topics? Read the docs here!