What Is the Name of This Book?

At the time this book was written, Raymond Smullyan was one of the world's leading experts on Godel's Incompleteness Theorems -- some of the deepest mathematical results of the 20th century. This book is actually a gentle intro to these topics, and the most amazing part of it is that Dr. Smullyan keeps the level suitable for children. That does NOT mean this book is not suitable for adults. It is extremely entertaining no matter what your age is. The book is mostly a progression of logical conundrums. You are started out on the island of knights and knaves. These two types of people are visually indistinguishable, but knights always tell the truth while knaves always lie. You are then presented with various scenarios where the objective is for you to ask one yes/no question from which you obtain some meaningful information without knowing whether the person you are asking is a knight or a knave. The obvious example of this, you meet one person on the island, and you want to ask them one yes/no question that allows you to determine whether they are a knight or a knave. Obviously, this would be pretty handy under the circumstances. Can it be done? Yes. Ask them, "If I were to ask you if you were a knight, would you say 'yes'?" A knight will always answer this question "Yes" and a knave "No". If you can follow the logic through to conclude this, you are on your way!! It's very easy to follow through for the knight, but the knave is a bit more tricky, but this example indicates the importance of case analysis and the use of hypotheticals in your questions to induce lying about lying. The situations in the book steadily grow more complex. For example, later you find yourself on a similar island where the natives use the words "boo" and "da" for "yes" and "no". The problem is, you don't know which is which! At the end of the book, you are presented with the ultimate level of complexity where not only do half the people always lie and half tell the truth, and not only do they use the words "boo" and "da" for "yes" and "no" (without you knowing which is which), but half of the population is also insane which means that whatever is true, they BELIEVE the opposite. So an insane liar always inadvertantly tells the truth because what they believe is false...and then they lie about it. Sound tricky? Yeah, that's the point. Nonetheless, the book is a nice progression, and you definitely get better and better and following the logic through and thinking in these terms, which makes this book GREAT mental exercise! Some of the best I have found, in fact. I will leave it to Dr. Smullyan to discuss to connection of these exercises with Godel's work. One final comment, an earlier review is very wrong on the point of implication: an implication of the form a->b, is ALWAYS true when a is false. This is elementary formal logic -- a subject in which Dr. Smullyan was a renowned expert. <br /> <br />Interestingly, this strikes many people as highly objectionabl

A true delight to read, although the one reviewers comments (John Morrison from Houston) brought to mind the truth of Pope's comment,"A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again." As you read this book hopefully your brain will be stimulated to ask questions AND to dig deeper to learn ther answers. Smullyan is NOT wrong when he says that a false hypothesis yields a true conditional statement. I haven't read the book in decades, so I can't comment on whether or not Smullyan explicits says this, but conditional statements do not express causal relations (I can understand how a physicist would think this.) Anyhow, this is a great book for young children with inquisitive minds and even for old children who think they know it all.MB

An amazing book that trains you to use your brain effectively through a careful structure that increases in complexity as you progress. I read it when very young and would like to get copies for all my staff as it is an excellent tutorial on logic and perfect for orienting systems programmers into looking at complex problems with a fresh viewpoint. Sadly it appears to be out of print and I join the cry in asking the publisher to pull it out of the archives.

Raymond Smullyan introduces the readers to simple logic problems and then starts to grow them more complex. Answers to the puzzles are provided with explaination, but Smullyan's more recent books clearly dig deeper. However, if you want some good knight/knave and dracula puzzles, this is a good place to start to learn about Godel. I recommend also obtaining: "Lady or the Tiger? And Other Logic Puzzles Including a Mathematical Novel That Features Godel's Great Discovery"

Don't read it at night as it would make you sleepless. The riddles are repeating themselves much. If you are a logical person, it won't take long to bore you. If you are not, it is a good exercise to train you to think in a logical way. The name of the book is paradoxical but the riddles are not, luckily. Memorize some interesting puzzles and test your friends would make you popular in peer group, I am sure.