Introduction to Logic: And to the Methodology of Deductive Sciences

This book has a lot of interesting remarks. I, however, feel that it is a bit too wordy.

I bought the book just because my teacher of elementary philosophy in the university respected Tarski as a master of formal logic. It took me 26 years to get this book in my hands. What makes Tarski unique is, that he was a great logician and a great teacher, too. I belive that there still are no better guide for a student who wants to understand logic, not just try to remember basic rules of it. The beauty of logic has never been exposed in a better way. The fifth star was spared to a new, annotated edition of this classic among the field of logic. I hope I can find one some day.

This timeless classic by one of the five greatest logicians of all time should be owned by anyone who cares about logic - especially at this illogically low price. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE), the English mathematician George Boole (1815-1864), the German mathematician Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), the Austrian-American mathematician Kurt Gödel and the Polish mathematician Alfred Tarski (1901-1983) are considered to be the five greatest logicians of history. Today it is difficult to appreciate the astounding permanence of what is accomplished in the works of Aristotle, Boole, and Frege without seeing their ideas surviving in the work of a modern master. Of the two modern master logicians Tarski is by far the most suitable for this purpose since he was by far the one most interested in the articulation of the conceptual basis of logic, he was by far the one most interested in history and philosophy of logic, and he was the only one to write an introductory book attempting to explain his perspective in accessible terms. This book, together with Aristotle's Prior Analytics and Boole's Laws of Thought, should form the core of any logic library. All three are still in print and available in inexpensive paperback editions. Hackett publishes an excellent up-to-date translation of Prior Analytics by Robin Smith and Prometheus recently reprinted Laws of Thought with an introduction by John Corcoran.- Frango Nabrasa.

This is one of the classic introductory mathematics books. When I was learning logic, I relied on it heavily, although it was not the text for the course. Over my years as a teacher, I have consulted it often and when I was working on a recent book on logic, there were very few days when I did not open it in search of an idea or clarification. All of the basics of logic are covered in one of the most readable texts I have ever opened. Exercises are given at the end of each chapter, although no solutions are included. This is one of those books that will always be on my key shelves of reference works and it will no doubt receive a great deal of use.