Ebook: A Course in Mathematical Logic

A Course in Mathematical Logic for Mathematicians, Second Edition offers a straightforward introduction to modern mathematical logic that will appeal to the intuition of working mathematicians. The book begins with an elementary introduction to formal languages and proceeds to a discussion of proof theory. It then presents several highlights of 20th century mathematical logic, including theorems of Gödel and Tarski, and Cohen's theorem on the independence of the continuum hypothesis. A unique feature of the text is a discussion of quantum logic.

The exposition then moves to a discussion of computability theory that is based on the notion of recursive functions and stresses number-theoretic connections. The text present a complete proof of the theorem of Davis–Putnam–Robinson–Matiyasevich as well as a proof of Higman's theorem on recursive groups. Kolmogorov complexity is also treated.

Part III establishes the essential equivalence of proof theory and computation theory and gives applications such as Gödel's theorem on the length of proofs. A new Chapter IX, written by Yuri Manin, treats, among other things, a categorical approach to the theory of computation, quantum computation, and the P/NP problem. A new Chapter X, written by Boris Zilber, contains basic results of model theory and its applications to mainstream mathematics. This theory has found deep applications in algebraic and diophantine geometry.

Yuri Ivanovich Manin is Professor Emeritus at Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany, Board of Trustees Professor at the Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, and Principal Researcher at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics, Moscow, Russia. Boris Zilber, Professor of Mathematical Logic at the University of Oxford, has contributed the Model Theory Chapter for the second edition.

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This book is a text of mathematical logic on a sophisticated level, presenting the reader with several of the most significant discoveries of the last 10 to 15 years, including the independence of the continuum hypothesis, the Diophantine nature of enumerable sets and the impossibility of finding an algorithmic solution for certain problems. The book contains the first textbook presentation of Matijasevic's result. The central notions are provability and computability; the emphasis of the presentation is on aspects of the theory which are of interest to the working mathematician. Many of the approaches and topics covered are not standard parts of logic courses; they include a discussion of the logic of quantum mechanics, Goedel's constructible sets as a sub-class of von Neumann's universe, the Kolmogorov theory of complexity. Feferman's theorem on Goedel formulas as axioms and Highman's theorem on groups defined by enumerable sets of generators and relations. A number of informal digressions concerned with psychology, linguistics, and common sense logic should interest students of the philosophy of science or the humanities.