Oxford paperbacks
2 total works
"The Lady or the Tiger?" is a series of problems and paradoxes all compiled chiefly to entertain and related to important concepts of contemporary logic and mathematical theory. The puzzles range from the simplest "old chestnuts" to the most tantalizing complexities. In the first half of the book, a range of imaginary characters - sane and insane vampires, psychiatrists, dreamers, hermits, kings, knights, and knaves - pose questions, giving just enough information to enable the reader to solve problems or increasing difficulty. A fair-minded king, for example, tells his prisoners the few facts necessary for a clever puzzler to earn his freedom (and perhaps a bride) by choosing correctly between the Lady or the Tiger. The last section, "The Mystery of the Monte Carlo", is a mathematical novel. Beginning with the practical problem of finding a combination to open a safe, Inspector Craig, serendipitiously assisted by two friends and their number machines, finds himself in ever deeper mathematical waters, which lead eventually to the very heart of Godel's revolutionary theory of undecidability.
This book provides an introduction to Kurt Godel's theorems through a collection of puzzles interspersed with an account of symbolic logic. Godel's argument has been transferred from the formal domain of mathematical systems in an attempt to make its essential ideas more accessible to the general reader. The primary emphasis is on belief systems and how they are related to systems of mathematics. This leads to the subject of possible world semantics which plays a role in computer science and artificial intelligence.