Local set theory

Abstract

In 1945, Eilenberg and MacLane introduced the new mathematical notion of category. Unfortunately, from the very beginning, category theory did not fit into the framework of either Zermelo—Fraenkel set theory or even von Neumann—Bernays—Godel set-class theory. For this reason, in 1959, MacLane posed the general problem of constructing a new, more flexible, axiomatic set theory which would be an adequate logical basis for the whole of naive category theory. In this paper, we give axiomatic foundations for local set theory. This theory might be one of the possible solutions of the MacLane problem.