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Product Description
Product Description
In this entertaining and challenging collection of logic puzzles, Raymond Smullyan -- author of Forever Undecided -- continues to delight and astonish us with his gift for making available, in the thoroughly pleasurable form of puzzles, some of the most important mathematical thinking of our time. In the first part of the book, he transports us once again to that wonderful realm where knights, knaves, twin sisters, quadruplet brothers, gods, demons, and mortals either always tell the truth or always lie, and where truth-seekers are set a variety of fascinating problems. The section culminates in an enchanting and profound metapuzzle in which Inspector Craig of Scotland Yard gets involved in a search for the Fountain of Youth on the Island of Knights and Knaves. In the second part of To Mock a Mockingbird, we accompany the Inspector on a summer-long adventure into the field of combinatory logic (a branch of logic that plays an important role in computer science and artificial intelligence). His adventure, which includes enchanted forests, talking birds, bird sociologists, and a classic quest, provides for us along the way the pleasure of solving puzzles of increasing complexity until we reach the Master Forest and -- thanks to Godel's famous theorem -- the final revelation.
About the Author
Raymond Smullyan, a well-known mathematician and logician and the author of many books, is Oscar Ewing Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University and Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York-Lehman College and Graduate Center.
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First Sentence
In a certain flower garden, each flower was either red, yellow, or blue, and all three colors were represented. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
In a certain flower garden, each flower was either red, yellow, or blue, and all three colors were represented. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you are new to Smullyan and his puzzles this book is not a bad place to start from. You will find a great deal of logic problems regarding truth-tellers and liars, such as: "Person A says that at least one of A and B is a liar (never tells the truth). Is A a liar? And what about B?". This is the simplest type of puzzle; many are much more challenging.
If you already read some of Smullyan's books, be assured that this one has the same appeal. Some of the knight-knaves puzzles are similar to the ones in "What is the name of this book?" and "Alice in puzzle-land" but there are important variations such as day-knights and night-knights and there is also some challenging metapuzzle.
The second half of the book leaves the island of knights and knaves to enter an enchanted forest of talking birds. Though I found this part somewhat difficult to get in, once you work carefully your way through the first chapter you will find it fascinating. At the end you will have solved a lot of interesting problems and explored a subject called combinatory logic which has important applications in modern logic. As Smullyan puts it, "what could be better for a puzzle book?"
If you already read some of Smullyan's books, be assured that this one has the same appeal. Some of the knight-knaves puzzles are similar to the ones in "What is the name of this book?" and "Alice in puzzle-land" but there are important variations such as day-knights and night-knights and there is also some challenging metapuzzle.
The second half of the book leaves the island of knights and knaves to enter an enchanted forest of talking birds. Though I found this part somewhat difficult to get in, once you work carefully your way through the first chapter you will find it fascinating. At the end you will have solved a lot of interesting problems and explored a subject called combinatory logic which has important applications in modern logic. As Smullyan puts it, "what could be better for a puzzle book?"
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I enjoyed this book immensely, and if you like Smullyan's style, then you will too. However, I found some parts of it more difficult than other books I own by the same author. Perhaps the novice reader should choose a different book?
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
45 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Sweet and Simple introduction to functional programming.
30 May 2004
Format:Paperback
This book by Smullyan is different from his other puzzle books,
in that it is fully about puzzles from functional programming.
in that it is fully about puzzles from functional programming.
The birds are functors that compute on strings.
Self reference comes into play when the Mockingbird
shows you what a fixpoint computation is.
The phethora of birds may confuse you if you try to read it
fast or skip solving the puzzles. The problems are not
easy, it took the mighty mathematical titans - Turing and Godel
to provide the initial solutions. If you are stuck,
Smullyan provides all the solutions at the chapter end.
It requires concentration and remembering previous tricks,
something akin to solving Rubik's cube without a solution guide.
You will love it if you love chess problems.
In the end you will come out with a deep sense of
accomplishment having understood the proof of Godel's
incompleteness theorems, Combinatorial Logic, and Functional
programming, when all you thought you were doing was figuring
out puzzles of birds.
Hard to find book, but its worth its weight in gold.
The other book to complement this is "Forever Undecided,
a puzzle guide to Godel" by Smullyan, it uses Modal logic
puzzles to motivate you, but the end result is the same.
Remember Smullyan is Professor of mathematics and logic,
he is classy and witty like Knuth. Don't confuse him
with the popular mathematical journalists.
- Mosh http://www.cs.albany.edu/~mosh
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
To Mock a Mockingbird
22 Jun 2004
Format:Hardcover
After a disconnected array of logic puzzles at the beginning, the author embarks on an introductory course to combinatory logic. Given a little application (if you're like me you will need a pen and paper), you can get to grips with some of the fundamentals of mathematical logic with relatively little background. This is pretty astonishing.
The worst feature of the book is the fact that only one (unintuitive) model for the theory is provided. Discussion of the significance of the results obtained is not particularly useful - probably anyone smart enough to solve the puzzles will not find anything there that they couldn't figure out for themselves.
But nevermind: if you want a good introductory course in combinatory logic (or you want to understand (a version of) Godel's 1st incompleteness theorem), then I would recommend this book for you!
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
An awesome book
20 Mar 2002
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A reviewer of one of Smullyan's other works called him "a national treasure" and I have to agree. To Mock a Mockingbird is a fantastic book -- whether you're looking for fun logic puzzles or a lighter look at formal logic theory. This book is better than any college textbook, and right up there with any of Martin Gardner's best works. Highly recommended.
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