Structure of Decidable Locally Finite Varieties:
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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: McKenzie, Ralph (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Boston, MA Birkhäuser Boston 1989
Series:Progress in Mathematics 79
Subjects:
Online Access:Volltext
Item Description:A mathematically precise definition of the intuitive notion of "algorithm" was implicit in Kurt Godel's [1931] paper on formally undecidable propositions of arithmetic. During the 1930s, in the work of such mathematicians as Alonzo Church, Stephen Kleene, Barkley Rosser and Alfred Tarski, Godel's idea evolved into the concept of a recursive function. Church proposed the thesis, generally accepted today, that an effective algorithm is the same thing as a procedure whose output is a recursive function of the input (suitably coded as an integer). With these concepts, it became possible to prove that many familiar theories are undecidable (or non-recursive)- i. e. , that there does not exist an effective algorithm (recursive function) which would allow one to determine which sentences belong to the theory. It was clear from the beginning that any theory with a rich enough mathematical content must be undecidable. On the other hand, some theories with a substantial content are decidable. Examples of such decidabLe theories are the theory of Boolean algebras (Tarski [1949]), the theory of Abelian groups (Szmiele~ [1955]), and the theories of elementary arithmetic and geometry (Tarski [1951]' but Tarski discovered these results around 1930). The determination of precise lines of division between the classes of decidable and undecidable theories became an important goal of research in this area. algebra we mean simply any structure (A, h(i E I)} consisting of By an a nonvoid set A and a system of finitary operations Ii over A.
Physical Description:1 Online-Ressource (VIII, 216 p)
ISBN:9781461245520
9781461289081
DOI:10.1007/978-1-4612-4552-0

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