Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Bollati Boringhieri (2013), 144 pagine
Description
In 1931 Kurt Gödel published his fundamental paper, "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems." This revolutionary paper challenged certain basic assumptions underlying much research in mathematics and logic. Gödel received public recognition of his work in 1951 when he was awarded the first Albert Einstein Award for achievement in the natural sciences--perhaps the highest award of its kind in the United States. The award committee described his work in mathematical logic as "one of the greatest contributions to the sciences in recent times." However, few mathematicians of the time were equipped to understand the young scholar's complex proof. Ernest Nagel and James Newman provide a readable and accessible explanation to both scholars and non-specialists of the main ideas and broad implications of Gödel's discovery. It offers every educated person with a taste for logic and philosophy the chance to understand a previously difficult and inaccessible subject. Marking the 50th anniversary of the original publication of Gödel's Proof, New York University Press is proud to publish this special anniversary edition of one of its bestselling and most frequently translated books. With a new introduction by Douglas R. Hofstadter, this book will appeal students, scholars, and professionals in the fields of mathematics, computer science, logic and philosophy, and science.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member NoLongerAtEase
Nagel and Newman provide a nice, quick, and generally well written exposition of Godel's famous proof. This book can easily be read in an afternoon by anyone with the requisite background in logic.
They do a particularly nice job in their brief dissemination of the historical concerns that led up
However, there are a couple of real problems with this book.
First, I do not beleive that this book would really be that helpful for "the educated layman". Insofar as their target audience is concerned, the book is, perhaps, a failure. Why do I say this? Given its breivty, the authors are forced to introduce important bits of information without adequate exposition. For example, the notion of universal quantification makes its first appearance in the last twenty odd pages of the book and is explained in a sentence or to. This is fine for anyone that's had an intro logic course (and can recall what was covered) but is probably inadequate for the logical/mathematical novice. Furthermore, this example is just one case of something that occurs quite often throughout the book.
My second worry is that the actual mechanics of the proof are not presented lucidly. This is not altogether unexpected, but the fifteen pages or so that comprise the actual exposition of the proof seem to go by too quickly and sacrifice depth and clarity for readability and brevity. This may not be the authors' fault. I have doubts about whether or not one can successfully offer the sort of exegesis the authors are striving for. That is, I'm just not sure that anyone will ever pull off a lucid "Godel for Dummies".
Final thought: I think this book would best serve the needs of a first year graduate student or advanced undergraduate in philosophy. For the student that has some background in logic (perhaps they've done a completeness proof for FOL or at least some proofs with quantifiers) but has yet to take a meta-logic course this book can provide a nicely structured overview of what the the typical meta-logic course aims for.
They do a particularly nice job in their brief dissemination of the historical concerns that led up
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to the crisis in foundations in the late 19th and early 20th century. What's nice about this is that it puts Godel into context in a salient way. Godel without Hilbert is like Kant without Leibniz (and Wolff, I suppose). Given the narrow scope and short page count, Hilbert is covered well. However, there are a couple of real problems with this book.
First, I do not beleive that this book would really be that helpful for "the educated layman". Insofar as their target audience is concerned, the book is, perhaps, a failure. Why do I say this? Given its breivty, the authors are forced to introduce important bits of information without adequate exposition. For example, the notion of universal quantification makes its first appearance in the last twenty odd pages of the book and is explained in a sentence or to. This is fine for anyone that's had an intro logic course (and can recall what was covered) but is probably inadequate for the logical/mathematical novice. Furthermore, this example is just one case of something that occurs quite often throughout the book.
My second worry is that the actual mechanics of the proof are not presented lucidly. This is not altogether unexpected, but the fifteen pages or so that comprise the actual exposition of the proof seem to go by too quickly and sacrifice depth and clarity for readability and brevity. This may not be the authors' fault. I have doubts about whether or not one can successfully offer the sort of exegesis the authors are striving for. That is, I'm just not sure that anyone will ever pull off a lucid "Godel for Dummies".
Final thought: I think this book would best serve the needs of a first year graduate student or advanced undergraduate in philosophy. For the student that has some background in logic (perhaps they've done a completeness proof for FOL or at least some proofs with quantifiers) but has yet to take a meta-logic course this book can provide a nicely structured overview of what the the typical meta-logic course aims for.
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LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
The authors provide an overview of Kurt Gödel's 1931 proof regarding axiomatic demonstration in arithmetic. Gödel constructed his proof on the basis of Principia Mathematica by Whitehead and Russell, but this treatment does not presume a familiarity with that text. It does, however, place
For anyone interested in the beauty of logic or the elegance of math, the mechanisms of Gödel's proof are impressive. This book by Nagel and Newman reads quickly--for a math book. The reader must be prepared to slow down and spend five to ten minutes on a page when getting into the thick of the mathematical concepts in use. The reward of doing so is an appreciation of an intellectual event that provided a turning-point in the philosophy of knowledge.
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Gödel's work in the larger context of efforts to axiomatize arithmetic, an agenda notably defined by David Hilbert. The first five chapters set the stage for Gödel's proof in the history of mathematics and philosophy, while the fifth chapter discusses a critical idea underlying the operation of the proof. The long sixth chapter discusses the actual techniques and conclusions of the proof itself. A valuable final chapter outlines the larger implications and consequences, most especially and usefully discouraging misreadings which amount to "an invitation to despair or an excuse for mystery-mongering." (101) Interestingly, a secondary conclusion that they do support, is that algorithmic computers are unlikely ever to attain the equivalent of human consciousness. Gödel himself took his proof as support for a position of philosophical Realism, although it's not conclusive in that regard. For anyone interested in the beauty of logic or the elegance of math, the mechanisms of Gödel's proof are impressive. This book by Nagel and Newman reads quickly--for a math book. The reader must be prepared to slow down and spend five to ten minutes on a page when getting into the thick of the mathematical concepts in use. The reward of doing so is an appreciation of an intellectual event that provided a turning-point in the philosophy of knowledge.
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LibraryThing member billmcn
This is a non-formal, though still rigorous, presentation of the argument of Gödel's famous demonstration that will be accessible to anyone familiar with the basics of mathematical proof, logic, and number theory. By the end of the book, I acutally had the outline of Gödel's tricky
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self-referential argument all in my head at once, and though it faded quickly, I feel confident I could resurrect it with another reading. Nagel's description of the significance of the proof, as opposed to its mechanics, is less thorough, but that's a quibble. This slim book is a truly impressive feat of exposition. Show Less
LibraryThing member EmreSevinc
I remember my excitement when I read the first edition of this little gem back in 1999 (actually it was its Turkish translation). Being a young student of mathematics, it was impossible to resist reading a popular and clear account of maybe the most important theorem related to the fundamentals of
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axiomatic systems. After that came Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" which introduced more questions related to symbolic logical reasoning, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and the consequences of Gödel's work in those ares. With that background and ten years after the second edition, it was truly an exciting second reading, a refresher that was both fun and putting lots of things into perspective. Hofstadter's foreword to this edition is a delight to read and ponder upon. On the other hand, I don't think this is a point strong enough to persuade most of the people who own the first edition anyway. But if you don't have the first edition and want a concise and clear explanation of what Gödel's work is all about then this book is definitely for you. Show Less
LibraryThing member nealjking
This little book offers real insight into one of the weirdest aspects of modern mathematics.
LibraryThing member encephalical
Left me wondering about more foundational items that were mentioned in passing such as 'primitive recursive truths' and the 'Correspondence Lemma'. The exposition seemed rushed at the end.
LibraryThing member palaverofbirds
For a book that was supposed to simplify Godel's Proof it was exceptionally complex. No real thesis either; basically, the first 75% of the book is just setting up preliminaries and doesn't even deal directly with Godel's work. Reading this book gave me no further insights on Godel's challenging
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concepts. I recommend instead Godel, Escher, Bach, which is longer and only devotes a chapter's worth of study on the Proof, but does so in far simpler terms (the author of G.E.B. does the intro to this book.) Show Less
LibraryThing member antao
What Gödel's Theorem really says is this: In a sufficiently rich FORMAL SYSTEM, which is strong enough to express/define arithmetic in it, there will always be correctly built sentences which will not be provable from the axioms. That, of course, means their contradictions will not be provable,
Without a clear and explicit reference to the concept of a formal system all that is said regarding Gödel's theorems is highly inaccurate, if not altogether wrong. For instance, if we say that Gödel's statement is true, after saying that Gödel's Theorem states that it can't be proved either true or false. Without adding "formally", that doesn't really make much sense. We'd only be only talking about axioms, which are only a part of a formal system, and totally neglecting talking about rules of inference, which are what the theorems really deal with.
By independent I mean 'logically independent', that is only a consequence of Gödel's theorem in first order languages, whose logic is complete. In second order arithmetic, the Peano axioms entail all arithmetical truths (they characterize up to isomorphism the naturals), so that no arithmetical sentence is logically independent of such axioms. It occurs, however, that second order logic is incomplete and there is no way to add to the axioms a set of inference rules able to recursively derive from the axioms all of their logical consequences. This is why Gödel's theorems holds in higher order languages too. In fact, this is how the incompleteness of higher order logic follows from Gödel's theorems.
What prompt me to re-read this so-called seminal book? I needed something to revive my memory because of Goldstein's book on Gödel lefting me wanting for more...I bet you were expecting Hofstadter’s book, right? Nah...Both Nagel’s & Newman’s along with Hofstadter’s are failed attempts at “modernising” what can’t be modernised from a mathematical point of view.
Read at your own peril.
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either. So, in a word, the sentences, even though correctly built, will be INDEPENDENT OF the set of axioms. They are neither false nor true in the system. They are INDEPENDENT (cannot stress this enough). We want axioms to be independent of each other, for instance. That's because if an axiom is dependent on the other axioms, it can then be safely removed from the set and it'll be deduced as a theorem. The theory is THE SAME without it. Now, the continuum hypothesis, for instance, is INDEPENDENT of the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of the set theory (this was proved by Cohen). Therefore, it's OK to have two different set theories and they will be on an equal footing: the one with the hypothesis attached and the one with its contradiction. There'll be no contradictions in either of the theories precisely because the hypothesis is INDEPENDENT of the other axioms. Another example of such an unprovable Gödelian sentence is the 5. axiom of geometry about the parallel lines. Because of its INDEPENDENCE of the other axioms, we have 3 types of geometry: hyperbolic, parabolic and Euclidean. And this is the real core of The Gödel Incompleteness Theorem. By the way... What's even more puzzling and interesting is the fact that the physical world is not Euclidean on a large scale, as Einstein demonstrated in his Theory of Relativity. At least partially thanks to the works of Gödel we know that there are other geometries/worlds/mathematics possible and they would be consistent.Without a clear and explicit reference to the concept of a formal system all that is said regarding Gödel's theorems is highly inaccurate, if not altogether wrong. For instance, if we say that Gödel's statement is true, after saying that Gödel's Theorem states that it can't be proved either true or false. Without adding "formally", that doesn't really make much sense. We'd only be only talking about axioms, which are only a part of a formal system, and totally neglecting talking about rules of inference, which are what the theorems really deal with.
By independent I mean 'logically independent', that is only a consequence of Gödel's theorem in first order languages, whose logic is complete. In second order arithmetic, the Peano axioms entail all arithmetical truths (they characterize up to isomorphism the naturals), so that no arithmetical sentence is logically independent of such axioms. It occurs, however, that second order logic is incomplete and there is no way to add to the axioms a set of inference rules able to recursively derive from the axioms all of their logical consequences. This is why Gödel's theorems holds in higher order languages too. In fact, this is how the incompleteness of higher order logic follows from Gödel's theorems.
What prompt me to re-read this so-called seminal book? I needed something to revive my memory because of Goldstein's book on Gödel lefting me wanting for more...I bet you were expecting Hofstadter’s book, right? Nah...Both Nagel’s & Newman’s along with Hofstadter’s are failed attempts at “modernising” what can’t be modernised from a mathematical point of view.
Read at your own peril.
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Language
Original publication date
2001
Physical description
144 p.; 7.64 inches
ISBN
883392484X / 9788833924847