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Morley's categoricity theorem


In model theory, a branch of mathematical logic, a theory is κ-categorical (or categorical in κ) if it has exactly one model of cardinality κ up to isomorphism. Morley's categoricity theorem is a theorem of Michael D. Morley (1965), which states that if a first-order theory in a countable language is categorical in some uncountable cardinality, then it is categorical in all uncountable cardinalities.

Saharon Shelah (1974) extended Morley's theorem to uncountable languages: if the language has cardinality κ and a theory is categorical in some uncountable cardinal greater than or equal to κ then it is categorical in all cardinalities greater than κ.

Oswald Veblen in 1904 defined a theory to be categorical if all of its models are isomorphic. It follows from the definition above and the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem that any first-order theory with a model of infinite cardinality cannot be categorical. One is then immediately led to the more subtle notion of κ-categoricity, which asks: for which cardinals κ is there exactly one model of cardinality κ of the given theory T up to isomorphism? This is a deep question and significant progress was only made in 1954 when Jerzy Łoś noticed that, at least for complete theories T over countable languages with at least one infinite model, he could only find three ways for T to be κ-categorical at some κ:


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