Paradox
2014 • 240 pages

Ratings2

Average rating3.5

15

It's pretty good, and I definitely enjoy the MIT Essential Knowledge series and will pick up more of them. Felt a little rushed near the end, Cuonzo takes us from Pythagoras to Kant to current philosophy of science with Popper/Kuhn/etc. in about 50 pages. Also, it surprised me that a book so heavy on discussion of the Liar's Paradox (“This sentence is false.”) and recent developments in Logic as a field of study did not mention Gödel's incompleteness theorem at all. That very paradox lies at its heart and was an important (and explosive!) piece of modern formal logic.

Still, it is very good for what it is meant to be – a thought-provoking introduction for the average reader. It's exploration of Bayesian analysis was especially informative to me, as I was pretty unfamiliar with that.

September 28, 2020Report this review