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 can express. but cannot prove. How is this remarkable result established? This short book explains. It also discusses Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem. The aim is to make the Theorems available, clearly and accessibly, even to those with a quite limited formal background (and at much less than half of the length of the same author‘s more wide-ranging An Introduction to Gödel‘s Theorems)

The first edition was based on much-downloaded lecture notes for a course given in Cambridge for many years. This second edition is expanded and extensively revised.

Genres: Mathematics, Logic

154 pages, Paperback

Published November 9, 2022

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Reviews

[Arthur Drury]

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

[Christopher Junker]

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