"Solvable and Unsolvable Problems." In: Science News 31, pp. 7-23. Entire volume offered.

TURING, A. M. [Alan Mathison]

Published by Melbourne, London, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954.

Used Soft cover

From Scientia Books, ABAA ILAB, Arlington, MA, U.S.A. Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars

AbeBooks Seller since January 14, 1999

Association Member:

This book is no longer available. AbeBooks has millions of books. Please enter search terms below to find similar copies.

View this seller's items Create a Want for similar items

View all copies of this book

About this Item

137 pp; text figures (fig. 1 is in Turing's paper); 8 pages containing 26 numbered illustrations, bound after p. 64. Original printed wrappers. Spine sunned. Text browned. The sunning of the spine and the browning of the paper are typical for this book. Very Good. First Edition. Alan Turing's last publication. Quoting from B. Jack Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing, Seminal Writings in Computing, Logic, Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and Artificial Life (2004), p. 576: "In Chapter 1 ["On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem"] Turing proves the existence of mathematical problems that cannot be solved by the universal Turing machine. There he also advances the thesis, now called the Church-Turing thesis, that any systematic method for solving mathematical problems can be carried out by the universal Turing machine. Combining these two propositions yields the result that there are mathematical problems which cannot be solved by any systematic method--cannot, in other words, be solved by any algorithm. In 'Solvable and Unsolvable Problems' Turing sets out to explain this result to a lay audience. The article first appeared in Science News [offered here], a popular science journal of the time. Starting from concrete examples of problems that do admit of algorithmic solution, Turing works his way towards an example of a problem that is not solvable by any systematic method. Loosely put, this is the problem of sorting puzzles into those that will 'come out' and those that will not. Turing gives an elegant argument showing that a sharpened form of this problem is not solvable by means of a systematic method. The sharpened form of the problem involves what Turing calls 'the substitution type of puzzle' ". Seller Inventory # 17442

Report this item

Bibliographic Details

Title: "Solvable and Unsolvable Problems." In: ...
Publisher: Melbourne, London, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954.
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition

AbeBooks offers millions of new, used, rare and out-of-print books, as well as cheap textbooks from thousands of booksellers around the world. Shopping on AbeBooks is easy, safe and 100% secure - search for your book, purchase a copy via our secure checkout and the bookseller ships it straight to you.