Games for your mind : the history and future of logic puzzles / Jason Rosenhouse.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosenhouse, Jason, author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Logic puzzles.

Logic puzzles--History.

Mathematical recreations.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 333 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Other Title:

History and future of logic puzzles

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2020]

Summary:

"Logic puzzles were first introduced to the public by Lewis Carroll in the late nineteenth century and have been popular ever since. Games like Sudoku and Mastermind are fun and engrossing recreational activities, but they also share deep foundations in mathematical logic and are worthy of serious intellectual inquiry. Games for Your Mind explores the history and future of logic puzzles while enabling you to test your skill against a variety of puzzles yourself. In this informative and entertaining book, Jason Rosenhouse begins by introducing readers to logic and logic puzzles and goes on to reveal the rich history of these puzzles. He shows how Carroll's puzzles presented Aristotelian logic as a game for children, yet also informed his scholarly work on logic. He reveals how another pioneer of logic puzzles, Raymond Smullyan, drew on classic puzzles about liars and truthtellers to illustrate Kurt Gödel's theorems and illuminate profound questions in mathematical logic. Rosenhouse then presents a new vision for the future of logic puzzles based on nonclassical logic, which is used today in computer science and automated reasoning to manipulate large and sometimes contradictory sets of data. Featuring a wealth of sample puzzles ranging from simple to extremely challenging, this lively and engaging book brings together many of the most ingenious puzzles ever devised, including the "Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever," metapuzzles, paradoxes, and the logic puzzles in detective stories"--Publisher's description.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: I. The Pain and Pleasure of Logic

1. Is Logic Boring and Pointless?

1.1. Logic in Practice, Logic in Theory

1.2. Enter the Philosophers

1.3. Notes and Further Reading

2. Logic Just for Fun

2.1. Sudoku and Mastermind

2.2. Some Classic Logic Puzzles

2.3. Puzzles in Propositional Logic

2.4. Notes and Further Reading

2.5. Solutions

II. Lewis Carroll and Aristotelian Logic

3. Aristotle's Syllogistic

3.1. The Beginning of Formal Logic

3.2. Proposition Jargon

3.3. Operations on Propositions

3.4. Figures and Moods

3.5. Aristotle's Proof Methods

3.6. Notes and Further Reading

4. The Empuzzlement of Aristotelian Logic

4.1. Diagrams for Propositions

4.2. Playing the Game

4.3. A Closer Look at Placing Counters

4.4. One More Example

4.5. Are We Having Fun Yet?

4.6. Puzzles for Solving

4.7. Solutions

5. Sorites Puzzles

5.1. A Quadriliteral Diagram?

5.2. Notation and Formulas

5.3. The Formalization in Action

5.4. The Method of Underscoring

5.5. The Method of Trees

5.6. Puzzles for Solving

5.7. Notes and Further Reading

5.8. Solutions

6. Carroll's Contributions to Mind

6.1. The Barbershop Puzzle

6.2. Achilles and the Tortoise

6.3. Scholarly Responses to Carroll's Regress

6.4. Does the Tortoise Have a Point?

6.5. Notes and Further Reading

III. Raymond Smullyan and Mathematical Logic

7. Liars and Truthtellers

7.1. Propositional Logic

7.2. A Knight/Knave Primer

7.3. A Selection of Knight/Knave Puzzles

7.4. Sane or Mad?

7.5. The Lady or the Tiger?

7.6. Some Unusual Knights and Knaves

7.7. Two Elaborate Puzzles

7.8. Notes and Further Reading

7.9. Solutions

8. From Aristotle to Russell

8.1. Aristotle's Organon

8.2. Medieval Logic

8.3. Mill's A System of Logic

8.4. Boole and Venn

8.5. Russell's The Principles of Mathematics

8.6. Notes and Further Reading

9. Formal Systems in Life and Math

9.1. What Is a Formal System?

9.2. What Can Your Formal Language Say?

9.3. Formalizations of Arithmetic

9.4. Notes and Further Reading

10. The Empuzzlement of Godel's Theorems

10.1. Established Knights and Knaves

10.2. A Sentence That Is True but Unprovable

10.3. Establishment, Revisited

10.4. A Godelian Machine

10.5. Godel's Second Incompleteness Theorem

10.6. Puzzles for Solving

10.7. Notes and Further Reading

10.8. Solutions

11. Question Puzzles

11.1. Three Warm-Ups

11.2. The Power of Indexical Questions

11.3. The Heaven/Hell Puzzle

11.4. The Nelson Goodman Principle

11.5. Generalized Nelson Goodman Principles

11.6. Coercive Logic

11.7. Smullyan as a Writer

11.8. Solutions

IV. Puzzles Based on Nonclassical Logics

12. Should "Logics" Be a Word?

12.1. Logical Pluralism?

12.2. Is Classical Logic Correct?

12.3. Applications of Nonclassical Logic

12.4. Notes and Further Reading

13. Many-Valued Knights and Knaves

13.1. The Transitional Phase

13.2. The Three-Valued Island

13.3. The Fuzzy Island

13.4. Modus Ponens and Sorites

13.5. Puzzles for Solving

13.6. Solutions

V. Miscellaneous Topics

14. The Saga of the Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever

14.1. Boolos Introduces the Puzzle

14.2. Is There a Simpler Solution?

14.3. Trivializing the Hardest Puzzle Ever

14.4. Are Three Questions Necessary?

14.5. Two Questions When Random Is Really Random

14.6. What If Random Can Remain Silent?

14.7. Notes and Further Reading

15. Metapuzzles

15.1. A Warm-Up Puzzle

15.2. The Playful Children and Caliban's Will

15.3. Knight/Knave Metapuzzles

15.4. Solutions

16. Paradoxes

16.1. What Is a Paradox?

16.2. Paradoxes of Predication

16.3. The Paradox of the Preface

16.4. The Liar

16.5. Miscellaneous Paradoxes

16.6. Notes and Further Reading

17. A Guide to Some Literary Logic Puzzles

17.1. The Nine Mile Walk

17.2. The Early Days of "Logic Fiction"

17.3. A Gallery of Eccentric Detectives

17.4. The Anti-Logicians

17.5. Carr and Queen

17.6. The Thinking Machine.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [319]-326) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

9780691174075

0691174075

OCLC:

1151103970