Title: Searching for linear structures in the failure of the Stone-Weierstrass theorem

Abstract: We analyze the existence of vector spaces of large dimension inside the set $\mathcal{C}(L, \K) \setminus \overline{\mathcal{A}}$, where $L$ is a compact Hausdorff space and $\mathcal{A}$ is a self-adjoint subalgebra of $\mathcal C(L, \K)$ that vanishes nowhere on $L$ and does not necessarily separate the points of $L$. The results depend strongly on an equivalence relation that is defined on the algebra $\mathcal{A}$, denoted by $\sim_{\mathcal{A}}$, and a cardinal number that depends on $\sim_{\mathcal{A}}$ which we call the order of $\sim_{\mathcal{A}}$. We then introduce two different cases, when the order of $\sim_{\mathcal{A}}$ is finite or infinite. In the finite case, we show that $\mathcal{C}(L, \K) \setminus \overline{\mathcal{A}}$ is $n$-lineable but not $(n+1)$-lineable with $n$ being the order of $\sim_{\mathcal{A}}$. On the other hand, when the order of $\sim_{\mathcal{A}}$ is infinite, we obtain general results assuming, for instance, that the codimension of the closure of $\mathcal{A}$ is infinite or when $L$ is sequentially compact. To be more precise, we introduce the notion of the Stone-Weiestrass character of $L$ which is closely related to the topological weight of $L$ and allows us to describe the lineability of $\mathcal{C}(L, \K) \setminus \overline{\mathcal{A}}$ in terms of the Stone-Weierstrass character of subsets of $\sim_{\mathcal A}$. We also prove, in the classical case, that $(\mathcal{C}(\partial{D}, \C) \setminus \overline{\mbox{Pol}(\partial{D})}) \cup \{0\}$ (where $\mbox{Pol}(\partial{D})$ is the set of all complex polynomials in one variable restricted to the boundary of the unit disk) contains an isometric copy of $\text{Hol}(\partial{D})$ and is strongly $\mathfrak c$-algebrable, extending previous results from the literature.