String rewriting systems have proved very useful to study monoids. In good
cases, they give finite presentations of monoids, allowing computations on
those and their manipulation by a computer. Even better, when the presentation
is confluent and terminating, they provide one with a notion of canonical
representative of the elements of the presented monoid. Polygraphs are a
higher-dimensional generalization of this notion of presentation, from the
setting of monoids to the much more general setting of n-categories. One of the
main purposes of this article is to give a progressive introduction to the
notion of higher-dimensional rewriting system provided by polygraphs, and
describe its links with classical rewriting theory, string and term rewriting
systems in particular. After introducing the general setting, we will be
interested in proving local confluence for polygraphs presenting 2-categories
and introduce a framework in which a finite 3-dimensional rewriting system
admits a finite number of critical pairs
