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Introduction to Metamathematics
Stephen Cole Kleene was one of the greatest logicians of the twentieth century and this book is the influential textbook he wrote to teach the subject to the next generation. It was first published in 1952, some twenty years after the publication of Gadel's paper on the incompleteness of arithmetic, which marked, if not the beginning of modern logic, at least a turning point after which nothing was ever the same. Kleene was an important figure in logic, and lived a long full life of scholarship and teaching. The 1930s was a time of creativity and ferment in the subject, when the notion of computable moved from the realm of philosophical speculation to the realm of science. This was accomplished by the work of Kurt Gade1, Alan Turing, and Alonzo Church, who gave three apparently different precise definitions of computable. When they all turned out to be equivalent, there was a collective realization that this was indeed the right notion. Kleene played a key role in this process. One could say that he was there at the beginning of modern logic. He showed the equivalence of lambda calculus with Turing machines and with Gadel's recursion equations, and developed the modern machinery of partial recursive functions. This textbook played an invaluable part in educating the logicians of the present. It played an important role in their own logical education.
560 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1971
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 9, 2013
I first read this in my first term at university � reading mathematics with logic � and enjoyed the clarity and economy of explanation. I subsequently lent this copy to my good friend, Mark, an excellent companion as good friends go � and as good friends go, he went� off to America, book in tow. Apologies to Saki (HH Munro) for the blatant plagiarism! I have subsequently purchased my own copy which I will not be lending to friends, good or otherwise. For an introduction to metamathematics (sic!), I cannot recommend this volume more highly. Buy it from Amazon, borrow it from your library, but read it!
July 23, 2020
I don’t know why I expected this to be anything more than stupendously jejune. Important, but banal.
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November 8, 2009Thanks to Mike Kim for recommending this.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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