I just started to learn mathematical logic. I'm a graduate student. I need a book with relatively more examples. Any recommendation?
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1$\begingroup$ When you say "more examples", do you mean more examples of the early syntactical stuff, or more thorough lists of specific theories to which general results apply? For the latter, the book by Donald Monk is good, although its notation takes getting used to. The chapters on decidable and undecidable theories include many concrete examples. For the former, you should think about upper-level undergraduate books. Most graduate-level books in logic (and other parts of mathematics) have very few worked examples of basic theorems. They assume you will work out examples on your own at that level. $\endgroup$– Carl MummertSep 10, 2010 at 12:03
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$\begingroup$ I think what I mean is more introduction about the intuition from which the theory was generalized. $\endgroup$– ciciplusSep 14, 2010 at 3:47
14 Answers
For my work in this area, I refer to:
- Richard Epstein "Classical Mathematical Logic"
- Wolfgang Rautenberg "A Concise Introduction to Mathematical Logic"
- Jon Barwise "Handbook of Mathematical Logic"
- Jean Heijenoort "From Frege to Gödel"
- Wei Li "Mathematical Logic: Foundations for Information Science"
Rautenberg has a lot of examples, exercise, but is very heavy going (at least for me). Epstein is fairly recent and very well laid out. While, Barwise is the most comprehensive for when you need to deep dive.
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5$\begingroup$ Open Logic Project - is a collection of teaching materials on mathematical logic aimed at a non-mathematical audience, intended for use in advanced logic courses as taught in many philosophy departments. It is open-source: you can download the LaTeX code. It is open: you’re free to change it whichever way you like, and share your changes. It is collaborative: a team of people is working on it. $\endgroup$ Aug 21, 2018 at 19:36
A book that should be read by everyone in mathematics regardless of level is Wolfe's A Tour Through Mathematical Logic.
It's simply a compulsory read, I couldn't put it down. It gives a broad overview of mathematical logic and set theory along with its history, and it is absolutely beautifully written. That's the best place for anyone to begin.
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$\begingroup$ I attended a course on mathematical logic where a similar book by Ebbinghaus in German language was used. I can only recommend it. His style is not what some might call "easy", but it is very clear and with an attention to detail, which in its extent may be uncommon even in introductory books in this field. $\endgroup$– knutonNov 25, 2010 at 23:24
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1$\begingroup$ I warmly recommend the latest German edition. The English edition has received some devastating reviews, which makes me unsure whether it really matches the qualities of the German text (including such niceties as worked out solutions to the sometimes challenging exercises). $\endgroup$ Oct 13, 2013 at 22:53
Shoenfield's "Mathematical Logic". The notation is a bit dated, but the exercises are great.
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1$\begingroup$ +! for this great classic. All it needs is some examples. For some crazy reason, authors thought graduate textbooks didn't need examples in those days,which still puzzles me........... $\endgroup$ Oct 31, 2011 at 19:25
François G. Dorais and others made some great recommendations to me some time ago over on MathOverflow. They're fairly high-level (not exactly introductory courses) but they're good reads.
Here is an opinionated and detailed 100 page Study Guide to logic textbooks, updated fairly regularly.
Cori, Lascar, Pelletier, Mathematical Logic: A course with exercises -- Part I and Part II. Especially the second one.
I suggest to read:
- The incompleteness phenomenon, by H. Judah and M. Goldstern.
- There is a very good on-line course notes by L. van den Dries: http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~vddries/410notes/main.dvi
- A Mathematical Introduction to Logic by H. Enderton.
- Mathematical logic, by H.-D. Ebbinghaus, J. Flum and W. Thomas.
The following web page includes my list of 46 low to medium price textbooks on mathematical logic from 1940 to 2004 in chronological order.
http://www.topology.org/tex/conc/logicbooks.html
There's such a wide variety of topics and approaches in logic, it's difficult to give a particular recommendation. So my web page contains lists of which books cover which topics, including a cross-reference table of which topics are in which books, in chronological order.
Yuri Manin, A course in mathematical logic.
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$\begingroup$ There's a new addition of this book, now entitled A Course in Mathematical Logic for Mathematicians. $\endgroup$ Aug 22, 2012 at 22:26
I recently started studying from An Introduction to Mathematical Logic and Type Theory: To Truthe through Proof by Peter B. Andrews. It's great at my level of mathematical knowledge. Perhaps this is more introductory than you are looking for.
I know this is late by more than a decade, but you could give "Introduction to Logic and the Methodology of Deductive Sciences" by Alfred Tarksi a try, although I haven't read the entire book, I found the first few chapters of part I very readable. Here are some links to reviews of the book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/673488.Introduction_to_Logic
Happy reading!
I will give recommendations based on some stuff I actually tried reading.
- Stephe Kole Kleene's Logic book
This is the most detailed logic book that I have ever read in my life. It will give answers to foundational questions that you could not even imagine. One problem I felt with it is that it doesn't do a very good job bridging the logic we use in Natural language to the forma language. This leads me to the next recommendation.
- Modern Logic : Graeme Forbes
This is the only book I know which tries to explain in detail how the ideas of Logic can be applied to see Natural language itself in a different way. I am sure that a person who has tried studying the Grammar of at least one Natural language would really appreciate this book.