Duality, Vector Spaces and Absolutely Convex Modules

It is well-known (see Semadeni, Queen Pap. Pure Appl. Math., 33:1–98, 1973 and Pumplün and Röhrl, Commun. Algebra, 12(8):953–1019, 1984, 1985) that the embedding of vector spaces into the category of absolutely convex modules is reflective. As we will show, under a separatedness condition on these modules it is at the same time coreflective. This is a peculiar situation, see Kannan, Math. Ann., 195:168–174, (1972) and Hu $textrm {u{s}}It is well-known (see Semadeni, Queen Pap. Pure Appl. Math., 33:1–98, 1973 and Pumplün and R?hrl, Commun. Algebra, 12(8):953–1019, 1984, 1985) that the embedding of vector spaces into the category of absolutely convex modules is reflective. As we will show, under a separatedness condition on these modules it is at the same time coreflective. This is a peculiar situation, see Kannan, Math. Ann., 195:168–174, (1972) and Huek, Reflexive and coreflexive subcategories of unif and top, Seminar Uniform Spaces, Prague, 113–126, (1973), but we do find it also in the embedding (Lowen, Approach Spaces: The Missing Link in the Topology-Uniformity-Metric Triad. Oxford Mathematical Monographs, Oxford University Press, London, UK, 1997) and, by extension, in the embedding (see Lowen and Verwulgen, Houst. J. Math, 30(4):1127–1142, 2004, and Sioen and Verwulgen, Appl. Gen. Topol., 4(2):263–279, 2003. We demonstrate that, in this setting, by duality arguments, absolutely convex modules are indeed the numerical counterpart of vector spaces. All these, at first sight unrelated facts, are comprised in the commutative scheme below with natural dualisation functors and their left adjoints.