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

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 .

Author: C. Anthony Anderson
Publisher: Springer
Published: 01/31/2002
Pages: 627
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.41lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 1.38d
ISBN: 9781402001413

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