Forever Undecided is the most challenging yet of Raymond Smullyan’s
puzzle collections. It is, at the same time, an
introduction—ingenious, instructive, entertaining—to Gödel’s
famous theorems. With all the wit and
charm that have delighted readers of his previous books, Smullyan
transports us once again to that magical island where knights always
tell the truth and knaves always lie. Here we meet a new and amazing
array of characters, visitors to the island, seeking to determine the
natives’ identities. Among them: the census-taker McGregor; a
philosophical-logician in search of his flighty bird-wife, Oona; and a
regiment of Reasoners (timid ones, normal ones, conceited, modest, and
peculiar ones) armed with the rules of propositional logic (if X is
true, then so is Y). By following the Reasoners through
brain-tingling exercises and adventures—including journeys into the
“other possible worlds” of Kripke semantics—even the most
illogical of us come to understand Gödel’s two great theorems on
incompleteness and undecidability, some of their philosophical and
mathematical implications, and why we, like Gödel himself, must
remain Forever Undecided!
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780307962461
Publisert
2017
Utgiver
Random House Digital Inc.
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter