The new Second Edition incorporates a wealth of exercise sets, allowing students to test themselves and review important topics discussed throughout the text."--Jacket.
..."The book, written by one of the main researchers on the field, gives a complete account of the theory of r.e. degrees. .... The definitions, results and proofs are always clearly motivated and explained before the formal presentation; the proofs are described with remarkable clarity and conciseness. The book is highly recommended to everyone interested in logic. It also provides a useful background to computer scientists, in particular to theoretical computer scientists." Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum, Ungarn 1988 ..."The main purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to the main results and to the intricacies of the current theory for the recurseively enumerable sets and degrees. The author has managed to give a coherent exposition of a rather complex and messy area of logic, and with this book degree-theory is far more accessible to students and logicians in other fields than it used to be." Zentralblatt für Mathematik, 623.1988
This monograph presents recursion theory from a generalized point of view centered on the computational aspects of definability. A major theme is the study of the structures of degrees arising from two key notions of reducibility, the Turing degrees and the hyperdegrees, using techniques and ideas from recursion theory, hyperarithmetic theory, and descriptive set theory. The emphasis is on the interplay between recursion theory and set theory, anchored on the notion of definability. The monograph covers a number of fundamental results in hyperarithmetic theory as well as some recent results on the structure theory of Turing and hyperdegrees. It also features a chapter on the applications of these investigations to higher randomness.
This volume, which ten years ago appeared as the first in the acclaimed series Lecture Notes in Logic, serves as an introduction to recursion theory. The fundamental concept of recursion makes the idea of computability accessible to a mathematical analysis, thus forming one of the pillars on which modern computer science rests. The clarity and focus of this text have established it as a classic instrument for teaching and self-study that prepares its readers for the study of advanced monographs and the current literature on recursion theory.
This easy-to-follow textbook introduces the mathematical language, knowledge and problem-solving skills that undergraduates need to study computing. The language is in part qualitative, with concepts such as set, relation, function and recursion/induction; but it is also partly quantitative, with principles of counting and finite probability. Entwined with both are the fundamental notions of logic and their use for representation and proof. Features: teaches finite math as a language for thinking, as much as knowledge and skills to be acquired; uses an intuitive approach with a focus on examples for all general concepts; brings out the interplay between the qualitative and the quantitative in all areas covered, particularly in the treatment of recursion and induction; balances carefully the abstract and concrete, principles and proofs, specific facts and general perspectives; includes highlight boxes that raise common queries and clear confusions; provides numerous exercises, with selected solutions.
What can computers do in principle? What are their inherent theoretical limitations? The theoretical framework which enables such questions to be answered has been developed over the last fifty years from the idea of a computable function - a function whose values can be calculated in an automatic way.
This comprehensive overview ofmathematical logic is designedprimarily for advanced undergraduatesand graduate studentsof mathematics. The treatmentalso contains much of interest toadvanced students in computerscience and philosophy. Topics include propositional logic;first-order languages and logic; incompleteness, undecidability,and indefinability; recursive functions; computability;and Hilbert’s Tenth Problem.Reprint of the PWS Publishing Company, Boston, 1995edition.
This introductory graduate text covers modern mathematical logic from propositional, first-order and infinitary logic and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems to extensive introductions to set theory, model theory and recursion (computability) theory. Based on the author's more than 35 years of teaching experience, the book develops students' intuition by presenting complex ideas in the simplest context for which they make sense. The book is appropriate for use as a classroom text, for self-study, and as a reference on the state of modern logic.