Topological Representations of Mereological Systems
Thomas Mormann · 2000
The aim of this paper is to show that topology is a useful conceptual device for studying mereology. If M is a reasonable mereological system there is a topological space pt(M) such that the class O(pt(M)) of open subsets of pt(M) represents the class of the mereological individuals in a 1–1-fashion by the open sets of a topological space pt(M) in such a way that the mereological relations and operations such as parthood, overlapping, fusion, etc. are faithfully represented by the corresponding relations of inclusion, intersection, union etc in the topological realm. Moreover, the topological model may be used to import concepts and relations into mereology which originally were defined only for topology.