Godel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse @ richardeward.com

Godel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse
by Torkel Franzen
from A K Peters, Ltd.

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• Mind-bending mathematics
  Recently I was reading a letter in the newspaper in which the writer misstated what the anthropic principle was in order to satisfy his own agenda. That made me think of other rules, principles and theories that have been misused, usually to support a certain belief. Besides the anthropic principle, there is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and, as demonstrated in the title in Torkel Franzen's book, Godel's Theorem.
  Godel's Theorem is a mathematical idea that is usually described at the graduate... more info

• the name says it all, but . . .
  I found at least two mistakes in the book one factual and the other a Mathematical one; coming from a Mathematician!?!
  ~
  1) Page 12, 2nd paragraph, last sentence: "Whether a number n is prime . . ."
  You don't really have to divide a number n by all previous numbers from 2 to (n-1) in order to find out if it is prime or not. You just divide it by -all primes- which second power is less than the number and if you don't have such previous primes, you then use the same basic idea with... more info

• Sorry to dissent again
  Aside from my finding Goedel's theorem false, I see this book as dismally failing in its purport to be written for a general audience, also contended in the two blurbs on the back cover, stating that the book "explain[s] clearly and thoroughly just what the theorems really say" and "With exceptional clarity...gives careful, non-technical explanations..."
  The book instead indulges in such a profusion of technical language that it appears only suitable for discussions in specialized journals, and indeed... more info

• An excellent choice for courses that cover the philosophy of science and mathematics
  Godel's Incompleteness Theorems were a revolution in mathematics and there were repercussions and misunderstandings that rippled out into other fields. The main theorem first appeared in an Austrian journal in 1931 and can be stated very simply.
  In any consistent formal system S within which it is possible to perform a minimum amount of elementary arithmetic, there are statements that can neither be proved nor disproved.
  The consequences are enormous, in that it means that in any system that can... more info

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