Mathematical Logic
By Stephen Cole Kleene
* Publisher: Dover Publications
* Number Of Pages: 416
* Publication Date: 2002-12-18
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0486425339
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780486425337
* Binding: Paperback
Book Description:
Undergraduate students with no prior instruction in mathematical logic will benefit from this multi-part text. Part I offers an elementary but thorough overview of mathematical logic of 1st order. Part II introduces some of the newer ideas and the more profound results of logical research in the 20th century. 1967 edition.
Summary: Excellent introduction
Rating: 5
I have to agree with the more recent reviewer and disagree with the first one. I don't even have college-level maths; in fact, I failed abysmally in my school-leaving maths exams (I think I got an F). I wanted to read this because, now in my mid-30s, I had got very interested in various mathematical topics (game theory, number theory, logic) and was sick of just reading popular scientific books about them that assumed that you didn't know how to read the symbols. I ordered this to get me started on logic.
Kleene does an excellent job of introducing a novice like me to the first principles; it's true that he doesn't hang about, and he has a way of bullying his readers into making the effort to understand by dropping sarcastic little remarks like 'Anyone who cannot follow this is clearly mentally sluggish', years of teaching logic in Madison, WI clearly finding payback right there. Some readers may find that kind of thing overbearing, but I found it bracing. I admit that I'm only on page 14, but already I can find the scope of a propositional connective, and when I woke up this morning I had never heard of such a thing.
I thoroughly recommend this book; a brisk, clear, ruthlessly no-nonsense introduction to the subject. Maybe it's not 'Mathematical Logic for Dummies', but Kleene would probably crack that dummies shouldn't be attempting the subject in the first place.
http://ifile.it/o4fpq9/kleene.-.mathematical.logic.pdf
