Customer Reviews

Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern Logic (Textbooks in Mathematical Sciences)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you want a boring book that tells you exactly what to do to get a good grade from your teacher, this is not it. If you want an interesting book that gets to the heart of modern logic with a rich collection of examples in real real life (as opposed to fake real life) ranging from politics to Donald Duck comics, that encourage you to think for yourself (sadly, no-one can make you think for yourself), that gives you a sense of why people care about the subject and why you should too --- this is that book. I cannot praise it highly enough.

Rich, stimulating, ambitious. As other reviews indicate, not for students who are lazy, passive, mainly interested in grades (as opposed to learning and being challenged) and in being slowly spoon-fed stuff that good students (or high school students in Asia) would devour.

This is a logic book written in a very interesting and challenging manner. First, I REALLY think that this is NOT the book to get if you are interested in teaching yourself logic. As a "field guide" for the uninitiated, I think it would fail. However, as a text-book for an introductory course where one can ask a teacher a question, or get involved in discussion with classmates, I think it is AWESOME, challenging and fun. I love logic. I think it is the best class I have ever taken, and I am going on record as saying that one is NOT educated until one has a basic familiarity with formal logic and reason. How can we think if we can't.... think? If A => ~A is a ludicrous statement. TAKE A LOGIC CLASS!

The authors take an approach that really requires one re-read a section several times. They do not try and do the teacher's (or the student's) job by explaining everything in a very simple way. Instead, they attempt to wake up the students' logic skills by giving them the meat, and forcing them to re-read to get it. Also, they often have you trying exercises where you are not guaranteed to succeed because they went over everything already. They are trying to get you to a point where you can figure some of this stuff out, USING logic itself. It is an interesting approach, and as it was written by two professors at Smith (one of whom has sadly passed on) it is classroom tested. It works.

Teachers who use this text need to be ON THE BALL however. One could not just hand the students this textbook, assign reading and assignments, and expect them to get it. This is a book that is written for, and really requires, the classroom setting and a dedicated teacher supporting that setting. It would work in an online class too. And if you are in a class using this book: DON'T CUT ANY CLASSES. Show up, stay on top of the reading, and stay on top of the assignments.

Just a tidbit from the conservative Christian in me: I know these are profs at Smith, and I get the vibe there. I have been to the North East, I have seen Smith College, and I have dialoged with women from there... I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. But, was there REALLY a reason to do all the gender bending logic examples at the beginning? They aren't proving anything with this by the way, just playing with symbols... why? At first I thought it was just unintentional: it was supposed to be silly and fun. But no... my wife corrected me. "What, are you NAIVE?" she asked... So, I am confused by this: why? Just to annoy readers like me? I am beyond all the culture war stuff, and I am not deducting stars from the review or anything, but I did find this mildly annoying.

Overall a GREAT text and a good introduction to logic for a college class. Strongly recommended.

This book definitely does not explain much. Most of my class mates had to reach out to other sources like you-tube videos or google to understand the problems that the teacher was assigning. A bad teacher plus this book = failure. I don't know if im going to pass this class yet (I have a C right now), but this book definitely did not help my struggles. I also had to reach out to other sources. All this book is good for is to "describe" the problems I am working on so I can google them better. The worst part was the book not being able to describe the deductive parts. It suddently would just jump into a problem Example:

A => B
1. A => B
2. => E, 1
3. Etc..

Point is it did not explain with line number 2 meant. Why the E, why the 1? Etc. Google readings stated it's the elimination of the main connector, in this case => on line one. It would be nice to know some details or explanations. I am dissapointed in my professor for using this book and not explaning the problems when I had questions (I'll be kind and not name the school or professor). It was an online class, when I asked a question, she did not reply. Other students replied and tried to explain.

This book is horrible. It skips around, doesn't explain things well, and is definitely not a beginner's textbook for Logic. The authors included a lot of humor in the book, which helps make the struggle through each page more interesting, but there are much better textbooks for Logic, like The Logic Book.

If your class requires this book...drop it and take something else. The textbook is written to be clever and funny instead of instructional and is by far the worst textbook I have ever used. That being said, the seller shipped very fast and the book was in great condition. It's not their fault the book authors are clearly sadistic.