Gödel Without (Too Many) Tears

by Peter Smith

Kurt Gödel's famous First Incompleteness Theorem shows that for any sufficiently rich theory that contains enough arithmetic, there are some arithmetical truths the theory cannot prove. How is this remarkable result proved? This short book explains. It also discusses Gödel's Second Incompleteness Theorem. Based on much-downloaded lecture notes for a course given in Cambridge for many years, the aim is to make the Theorems available, clearly and accessibly, even to those with a quite limited formal background (and at a third of the length of the same author's more wide-ranging Introduction to Gödel's Theorems).

Genres: Mathematics, Logic

145 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2021

About the author

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Reviews

[Arthur Drury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Smith is a great teacher. The material is distilled, organized and clearly explained.

[Ewan Tsun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pedagogically, this book is fantastic.

[Christopher Junker · Rating 4 out of 5]

What little I understood I thought well explained but this is not a book for people who are not already pretty schooled in these matters