Abstract: Categorical orthodoxy has it that collections of ordinary mathematical structures such as groups, rings, or spaces, form categories (such as the category of groups); collections of 1-dimensional categorical structures, such as categories, monoidal categories, or categories with finite limits, form 2-categories; and collections of 2-dimensional categorical structures, such as 2-categories or bicategories, form 3-categories. We describe a useful way in which to regard bicategories as objects of a 2-category. This is a bit surprising both for technical and for conceptual reasons. The 2-cells of this 2-category are the crucial new ingredient; they are the icons of the title. These can be thought of as ``the oplax natural transformations whose components are identities, but we shall also give a more elementary description. We describe some properties of these icons, and give applications to monoidal categories, to 2-nerves of bicategories, to 2-dimensional Lawvere theories, and to bundles of bicategories.
Icon is the authors' acronym for ``identity component oplax natural. Bicategories, lax functors and icons are the objects, morphisms, 2-cells for a (strict) 2-category. In higher category theory we have learnt that it is foolhardy to claim that one particular choice of concept should be used to the exclusion of others. While being honest about some of their shortcomings, the author gives reasons why icons are the useful 2-cells in many contexts. An interesting motivation for them, at least between pseudo functors (homomorphisms of bicategories), is that they are the costrict 2-cells in the sesquicategory whose 2-cells are all oplax natural transformations.
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