Page "Category theory" Paragraph 1

Category theory is an area of study in mathematics that examines in an abstract way the properties of particular mathematical concepts, by formalising them as collections of objects and arrows ( also called morphisms, although this term also has a specific, non category-theoretical meaning ), where these collections satisfy some basic conditions.

Many significant areas of mathematics can be formalised as categories, and the use of category theory allows many intricate and subtle mathematical results in these fields to be stated, and proved, in a much simpler way than without the use of categories.