linguistic:paraphrasing, quality:correction
Relations between species of spaces

Topological notions (continuity, convergence, open sets, closed sets etc.) are defined naturally in every Euclidean space. In other words, every Euclidean space is also a topological space. Every isomorphism between two Euclidean spaces is also an isomorphism between the corresponding topological spaces (called " homeomorphism "), but the converse is wrong: a homeomorphism may distort distances. In Bourbaki's terms, "topological space" is an underlying structure of the "Euclidean space" structure. Similar ideas occur in category theory: the category of Euclidean spaces is a concrete category over the category of topological spaces; the forgetful (or "stripping") functor maps the former category to the latter category.

A three-dimensional Euclidean space is a special case of a Euclidean space. In Bourbaki's terms, the species of three-dimensional Euclidean space is richer than the species of Euclidean space. Likewise, the species of compact topological space is richer than the species of topological space.

Such relations between species of spaces may be expressed diagrammatically as shown in Fig. 3. An arrow from A to B means that every A-space is also a B-space, or may be treated as a B-space, or provides a B-space, etc. Treating A and B as classes of spaces one may interpret the arrow as a transition from A to B. (In Bourbaki's terms, "procedure of deduction" of a B-space from a A-space. Not quite a function unless the classes A,B are sets; this nuance does not invalidate the following.) The two arrows on Fig. 3 are not invertible, but for different reasons.

The transition from "Euclidean" to "topological" is forgetful. Topology distinguishes continuous from discontinuous, but does not distinguish rectilinear from curvilinear. Intuition tells us that the Euclidean structure cannot be restored from the topology. A proof uses an automorphism of the topological space (that is, self-homeomorphism) that is not an automorphism of the Euclidean space (that is, not a composition of shifts, rotations and reflections). Such transformation turns the given Euclidean structure into a (isomorphic but) different Euclidean structure; both Euclidean structures correspond to a single topological structure.

In contrast, the transition from "3-dim Euclidean" to "Euclidean" is not forgetful; a Euclidean space need not be 3-dimensional, but if it happens to be 3-dimensional, it is full-fledged, no structure is lost. In other words, the latter transition is injective (one-to-one), while the former transition is not injective (many-to-one). We denote injective transitions by an arrow with a barbed tail, "↣" rather than "→".

Both transitions are not surjective, that is, not every B-space results from some A-space. First, a 3-dim Euclidean space is a special (not general) case of a Euclidean space. Second, a topology of a Euclidean space is a special case of topology (for instance, it must be non-compact, and connected, etc). We denote surjective transitions by a two-headed arrow, "↠" rather than "→". See for example Fig. 4; there, the arrow from "real linear topological" to "real linear" is two-headed, since every real linear space admits some (at least one) topology compatible with its linear structure.

Such topology is non-unique in general, but unique when the real linear space is finite-dimensional. For these spaces the transition is both injective and surjective, that is, bijective; see the arrow from "finite-dim real linear topological" to "finite-dim real linear" on Fig. 4. The inverse transition exists (and could be shown by a second, backward arrow). The two species of structures are thus equivalent. In practice, one makes no distinction between equivalent species of structures. Equivalent structures may be treated as a single structure, as shown by a large box on Fig. 4.

The transitions denoted by the arrows obey isomorphisms. That is, two isomorphic A-spaces lead to two isomorphic B-spaces.

The diagram on Fig. 4 is commutative. That is, all directed paths in the diagram with the same start and endpoints lead to the same result. Other diagrams below are also commutative, except for dashed arrows on Fig. 9. The arrow from "topological" to "measurable" is dashed for the reason explained there: "In order to turn a topological space into a measurable space one endows it with a σ-algebra. The σ-algebra of Borel sets is the most popular, but not the only choice." A solid arrow denotes a prevalent, so-called "canonical" transition that suggests itself naturally and is widely used, often implicitly, by default. For example, speaking about a continuous function on a Euclidean space, one need not specify its topology explicitly. In fact, alternative topologies exist and are used sometimes, for example, the fine topology; but these are always specified explicitly, since they are much less notable that the prevalent topology. A dashed arrow indicates that several transitions are in use and no one is quite prevalent.