On the Foundation of Algebraic Topology
In the 70:th, combinatorialists begun to systematically relate simplicial complexes and polynomial algebras, named Stanley-Reisner rings or face rings. This demanded an algebraization of the simplicial complexes, that turned the empty simplicial complex into a zero object w.r.t. to simplicial join, losing its former role as join-unit - a role taken over by a new (-1)-dimensional simplicial complex containing only the empty simplex. There can be no realization functor targeting the classical category of topological spaces that turns the contemporary simplicial join into topological join unless a (-1)-dimensional space is introduced as a topological join-unit. This algebraization of general topology enables a homology theory that unifies the classical relative and reduced homology functors and allows a Künneth Theorem for simplicial resp. topological pair-joins.