The Godelian Puzzle Book

Download or read book The Gödelian Puzzle Book written by Raymond M. Smullyan and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-08-21 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These logic puzzles provide entertaining variations on Gödel's incompleteness theorems, offering ingenious challenges related to infinity, truth and provability, undecidability, and other concepts. No background in formal logic necessary.

Download or read book Forever Undecided written by Raymond M. Smullyan and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-07-04 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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!

Download or read book Satan, Cantor, And Infinity And Other Mind-bogglin written by Raymond M. Smullyan and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than two hundred new and challenging logic puzzles—the simplest brainteaser to the most complex paradoxes in contemporary mathematical thinking—from our topmost puzzlemaster (“the most entertaining logician who ever lived,” Martin Gardner has called him). Our guide to the puzzles is the Sorcerer, who resides on the Island of Knights and Knaves, where knights always tell the truth and knaves always lie, and he introduces us to the amazing magic—logic—that enables to discover which inhabitants are which. Then, in a picaresque adventure in logic, he takes us to the planet Og, to the Island of Partial Silence, and to a land where metallic robots wearing strings of capital letters are noisily duplicating and dismantling themselves and others. The reader’s job is to figure out how it all works. Finally, we accompany the Sorcerer on an alluring tour of Infinity which includes George Cantor’s amazing mathematical insights. The tour (and the book) ends with Satan devising a diabolical puzzle for one of Cantor’s prize students—who outwits him! In sum: a devilish magician’s cornucopia of puzzles—a delight for every age and level of ability.

Download or read book Alice in Puzzle-land written by Raymond M. Smullyan and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2011 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass populate these 88 intriguing puzzles. Mathematician Raymond Smullyan re-creates the spirit of Lewis Carroll's writings in puzzles involving word play, logic and metalogic, and philosophical paradoxes. Challenges range from easy to difficult and include solutions, plus 60 charming illustrations. "An ingenious book." — Boston Globe.

Download or read book To Mock a Mockingbird written by Raymond M. Smullyan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Forever Undecided, Raymond Smullyan continues to delight and astonish us with his gift for making available, in the thoroughly pleasurable form of puzzles, some of the most important mathematical thinking of our time.

Download or read book Godel's Incompleteness Theorems written by Raymond M. Smullyan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-08-20 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kurt Godel, the greatest logician of our time, startled the world of mathematics in 1931 with his Theorem of Undecidability, which showed that some statements in mathematics are inherently "undecidable." His work on the completeness of logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency of the axiom of choice and the continuum theory brought him further worldwide fame. In this introductory volume, Raymond Smullyan, himself a well-known logician, guides the reader through the fascinating world of Godel's incompleteness theorems. The level of presentation is suitable for anyone with a basic acquaintance with mathematical logic. As a clear, concise introduction to a difficult but essential subject, the book will appeal to mathematicians, philosophers, and computer scientists.

Download or read book King Arthur in Search of His Dog and Other Curious Puzzles written by Raymond M. Smullyan and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2010-04-21 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fanciful, original collection for readers of all ages features arithmetic puzzles, logic problems related to crime detection, and logic and arithmetic puzzles involving King Arthur and his Dogs of the Round Table.