Logic, Meaning and Computation : Essays in Memory of Alonzo Church

Church, Alonzo (EDT); Zeleny, Michael (EDT); Anderson, C. Anthony (EDT)

ISBN 10: 140200141X / ISBN 13: 9781402001413

Edité par Springer, 2002

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N° de réf. du vendeur 5124806-n

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Logic, Meaning and Computation : Essays in Memory of Alonzo Church
• Éditeur: Springer
• Date de parution: 2002
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 140200141X
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9781402001413
• Reliure: Couverture rigide
• État de l'article: New

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Synopsis

Alonzo Church was undeniably one ofthe intellectual giants of theTwenti- eth Century . These articles are dedicated to his memory and illustrate the tremendous importance his ideas have had in logic, mathematics, comput er science and philosophy . Discussions of some of thesevarious contributions have appeared in The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, and th e interested reader is invited to seek details there . Here we justtry to give somegener al sense of the scope, depth, and value of his work. Church is perhaps best known for the theorem, appropriately called " C h u r c h's Theorem ", that there is no decision procedure forthelogical valid- ity of formulas first-order of logic . A d ecision proce dure forthat part of logic would have come near to fulfilling Leibniz's dream of a calculus that could be mechanically used tosettle logical disputes . It was not to . be It could not be . What Church proved precisely is that there is no lambda-definable function that can i n every case providethe right answer, ' y e s ' or ' n o', tothe question of whether or not any arbitrarily given formula is valid .