boolos burgess and jeffrey 5th edn

Boolos, Burgess and Jeffrey, 5th edn.

It seems only yesterday that the fourth edition came out: but -- as I

found in the CUP bookshop today --- there's now a fifth edition of

Computability and Logic. The preface announces that the main revision

in this addition is a "simplification of the treatment of the

representability of recursive functions". And the material on Robinson

Arithmetic has been rewritten, and there's a more explicit discussion

of the two uses we can make of Church's Thesis (essential and

eliminable).

I confess to still perhaps preferring the more spartan elegance of the

early editions. And I think that the book has always been, then and

now, rather harder for students than the authors intended (which was

one reason that I imagined that there was room for my G�del book, even

though it criss-crosses over quite a bit of the same territory). But

credit where a great deal of credit is due: this is still a lovely

book, full of good things and with some terrific explanations of

tricky stuff. So hasten to your bookshop ...