The encodability hierarchy for PCF types

Working with the simple types over a base type of natural numbers (including product types), we consider the question of when a type $\sigma$ is encodable as a definable retract of $\tau$: that is, when there are $\lambda$-terms $e:\sigma\rightarrow\tau$ and $d:\tau\rightarrow\sigma$ with $d \circ e = id$. In general, the answer to this question may vary according to both the choice of $\lambda$-calculus and the notion of equality considered; however, we shall show that the encodability relation $\preceq$ between types actually remains stable across a large class of languages and equality relations, ranging from a very basic language with infinitely many distinguishable constants $0,1,\ldots$ (but no arithmetic) considered modulo computational equality, up to the whole of Plotkin's PCF considered modulo observational equivalence. We show that $\sigma \preceq \tau \preceq \sigma$ iff $\sigma \cong \tau$ via trivial isomorphisms, and that for any $\sigma,\tau$ we have either $\sigma \preceq \tau$ or $\tau \preceq \sigma$. Furthermore, we show that the induced linear order on isomorphism classes of types is actually a well-ordering of type $\epsilon_0$, and indeed that there is a close syntactic correspondence between simple types and Cantor normal forms for ordinals below $\epsilon_0$. This means that the relation $\preceq$ is readily decidable, and that terms witnessing a retraction $\sigma \lhd \tau$ are readily constructible when $\sigma \preceq \tau$ holds.