Question: What is more convenient/useful? Writing mathematics as if every group is a monoid, or as if these two classes are disjoint?
Additional discussion. Define a monoid as follows.
Defn 1. A monoid is a triple $(X,*,e)$ such that $*$ is an associative binary operation on $X$, and $e \in X$, and $e$ has the property that for all $x \in X$ it holds that $x * e = e * x = x$.
From here, there's at least two ways of defining a group.
Defn 2. A group is a monoid $(X,*,e)$ such that for all $x \in X$ there exists $y \in X$ such that $x*y=e$.
Defn 2'. A group is a quadruple $(X,*,e,i)$ such that $(X,*,e)$ is a monoid, and $i$ is a function $X \rightarrow X$, and for all $x \in X$ it holds that $x * i(x) = e$.
Now I understand that minimalism favors Defn 2, while practitioners of universal algebra favor Defn 3. However, this is not my question.
My question is not: which is preferable, Defn 2 or Defn 2'?
Rather, my question is: which is preferable, definitions like Defn 2 such that every group is a monoid, or definitions like Defn 2' such that no group is monoid? So just to clarify, I want to know: what is more convenient/useful? Writing mathematics as if every group is a monoid, or as if these two classes are disjoint?
Best Answer
In my opinion Definition 2' is the correct definition (and Definition 2 is not a definition, but rather a characterization), because it follows the general principles how algebraic structures are defined in universal algebra (by operations satisfying equations), and therefore it also directly generalizes to other categories, for example topological spaces. A topological group is not just a topological monoid such that every object has an inverse. We also need that the inverse map is a continuous map (it is an interesting fact that for Lie groups this is automatic). So it is useful when the inverse map belongs to the data.
There are several other reasons why this is important: The subgroup generated by a subset $X$ of a group has underlying set $\{a_1^{\pm 1} \cdots \dotsc \cdots a_n^{\pm 1} : a_i \in X\}$. When you view groups as special monoids, you may forget the $\pm 1$ here.
Different categories should always be considered as disjoint. This helps to organize mathematics a lot. Unfortunately, forgetful functors between these categories are usually ignored, treated as if they were identities, but of course they are not. For example, we have the forgetful functor $U : \mathsf{Grp} \to \mathsf{Mon}$. It turns out that it is fully faithful (in many texts group homomorphisms are defined that way, of course again this is not conceptually correct). It has a left adjoint (Grothendieck construction) as well as a right adjoint (group of units). In particular it preserves all limits and colimits. These properties of $U$ show that often (but not always!) there is no harm when you identitfy $G$ with $U(G)$.
By the way, Definition 2' is conceptually not complete yet. You have to assume $x \cdot i(x) = i(x) \cdot x = e$. This becomes important when you study group objects in non-cartesian categories, aka Hopf monoids, for example Hopf algebras. The axiom for the antipode then contains two diagrams.