We present a general method for deciding whether a Grothendieck topos satisfies De Morgan's law (resp. the law of excluded middle) or not; applications to the theory of classifying toposes follow. Specifically, we obtain a syntactic characterization of the class of geometric theories whose classifying toposes satisfy De Morgan's law (resp. are Boolean), as well as model-theoretic criteria for theories whose classifying toposes arise as localizations of a given presheaf topos. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

This chapter provides the topos-theoretic background necessary for understanding the contents of the book; the presentation is self-contained and only assumes a basic familiarity with the language of category theory. The chapter begins by reviewing the basic theory of Grothendieck toposes, including the fundamental equivalence between geometric morphisms and flat functors. Then it presents the notion of first-order theory and the various deductive systems for fragments of first-order logic that will be considered in the course of the book, notably including that of geometric logic. Further, it discusses categorical semantics, i.e. the interpretation of first-order theories in categories possessing ‘enough’ structure. Lastly, the key concept of syntactic category of a first-order theory is reviewed; this notion will be used in Chapter 2 for constructing classifying toposes of geometric theories.

We introduce an abstract topos-theoretic framework for building Galois-type theories in a variety of different mathematical contexts; such theories are obtained from representations of certain atomic two-valued toposes as toposes of continuous actions of a topological group. Our framework extends Grothendieck's theory of Galois categories and allows to build Galois-type equivalences in new contexts, such as for example graph theory and finite group theory

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