  The recent trend in mathematics is towards a framework of abstract
mathematical objects, rather than the more concrete approach of explicitly
defining elements which objects were thought to consist of. A natural question
to raise is whether this sort of abstract approach advocated for by Lawvere,
among others, is foundational in the sense that it provides a unified,
universal, system of first order axioms in which we can define the usual
mathematical objects and prove their usual properties. In this way, we view the
``foundation" as something without any necessary justification or starting
point. Some of the main arguments for categories as such a structure are laid
out by MacLane as he argues that the set-theoretic constructions are
inappropriate for current mathematics as practices, and that they are
inadequate to properly encompass category theory itself and therefore cannot
properly encompass all of mathematics, while category theory can be used to
describe set theory and all the natural consequences of a given primitive
system.
