ImperialViolet

Laws of Form (12 Nov 2002)

(Laws of Form, G. Spencer Brown, ISBN: 0 04 510028 4)

I got Laws of Form from the library after it was mentioned in this K5 article on alternative logic systems. (it is also mentioned in The Ghost Not).

It's a neat little book, if a little dry. I highly recommend reading the notes at the same time as reading the chapters in order to make sense of anything. I must admit that, at the end of it, I'm a little disappointed. The ideas contained are neat, but I cannot help feeling that a different author could have made a better job of the book. In fact, I'm very glad I had read the two links above before the book as they explain things a lot more clearly. Also, some of the more interesting parts (such as the link to predicate logic is given but a short section in the notes).

G\"odel's Proof
(G\"odel's Proof, Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman, ISBN: not given)

(I'm sure there's a &something; to get the accent right above the o. But I don't know what it is so just imagine that your brain preparses TeX...)

Chaitin described G\"odel's 1931 paper as "very difficult to understand" and recommended this book instead. I wholeheartedly agree. I got this book from the library at 11am today and had finished it by 5pm, even with 4 hours of lectures and lunch and a geometry sheet in there too. A very gentle introduction to G\odel's proof which deals with about as much detail as you would wish and no more. If you've translated the original paper from the German into Lojban etc, then you aren't going to get much from this I'll admit, for everyone else this is a must.

Aaron

Aaron now has (IMHO) the prettyist blog. There is also a wonderful entry on trusted computing (best viewed in Mozilla).