Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Gödel's incompleteness theorems



Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems
Kurt Gödel (Translation and expository writings by Susumu Hayashi and Mariko Yasugi)
ISBN 4-00-339441-0

This is a unique book on the Gödel's incompleteness theorems.
It consists of 3 parts.
The first part of of the book is a translation of the original Gödel's paper, ant the second expository writings by the translators on historical perspective of foundation of mathematics mainly focuses on works of David Hilbert, not the theorems themself. This is because it's essential to understand the historical background why the theorems were discovered.
The third part is an annotation of Goedel's original paper, and furthermore the translators tries to reconstruct Goedel's thoughts when he discovered the theorems.

Actually, I picked up the book at a book store to have better understanding on Penrose's theory on consciousness, but the book is more than my expectation. :)

I'm not sure if there is an English translation of the book, but I believe it's worth reading anyway. :)

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