The purpose of the book is to take stock of the situation concerning
Algebra via Category Theory in the last fifteen years, where the new and
synthetic notions of Mal'cev, protomodular, homological and semi-abelian
categories emerged. These notions force attention on the fibration of
points and allow a unified treatment of the main algebraic: homological
lemmas, Noether isomorphisms, commutator theory.
The book gives full importance to examples and makes strong connections
with Universal Algebra. One of its aims is to allow appreciating how
productive the essential categorical constraint is: knowing an object,
not from inside via its elements, but from outside via its relations
with its environment.
The book is intended to be a powerful tool in the hands of researchers
in category theory, homology theory and universal algebra, as well as a
textbook for graduate courses on these topics.