Background Material

This chapter serves the rest of the book: all later chapters presuppose it. It introduces the calculus of binary relations, and relates it to basic concepts and results from lattice theory, universal algebra, category theory and logic. It also fixes the notation and terminology to be used in the rest of the book. Our aim here is to write in a way accessible to readers who desire a gentle introduction to the subject of relational methods. Other readers may prefer to go on to further chapters, only referring back to Chapt. 1 as needed.