Elementary applied symbolic logic

by Bangs L. Tapscott

Elementary Applied Symbolic Logic

512 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1976

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The philosophy degree at Loyola University Chicago required a logic course. I took Symbolic Logic with Arne Van der Nat with Tapscott as our text. It was thoroughly fun, like the mathematics courses back in high school. One has a text. It is divided into topic chapters. Each chapter has a set of problems to solve, with some of the answers being given in the back of the text. One solves the problems. Neat and simple. The best part of it was striving for elegance. Like in geometry, there might be many solutions, but the preferred solution would be the most parsimonious in expression. I would go home at night and sit in front of graph paper, mapping out the various operations and determining the best, most elegant way to go.

Arne liked me a lot and I liked him a lot. I always did the work, sometimes had "better" solutions than he did and participated in class. He liked me so much that a couple of years later he had the department assign me to co-teach a logic class. Unfortunately, by that time I'd forgotten everything, not having given logic much thought since his class, and had to do the course staying one chapter ahead of the students. No one had consulted me in this assignment. No one, so far as I ever heard, was ever consulted in such teaching assignments. Poor undergraduates!

[Omar Hacallar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book to have as a collection I recommend this book as a prerequisite to a person wanting to pursue engineering, computer science, math or economics. Its a book that contains rigorous proofs with demorgans law, modus tollens, truth tables, existential quantifiers, etc. Some proofs can take more than one page and 30 steps. Love it! If you love plane and solid geometry proofs, you will love this book!