Das Universalien-Problem (Wege der Forschung, Band LXXXIII)

Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978. Near Fine condition. Clean, square, and tight. Pages are fresh and crisp. No underlining. No highlighting. No margin notes. Among this collection's 21 essays are 5 by Willard van Orman Quine, and 3 by Alonzo Church, i.e. Propositionen und Satze (1956); Ontologische Voraussetzungen (1958); and Intensionale Semantik (1951). Bound in the original gray cloth, lettered in red, and in gold over a red spine panel. This is one of several dozen books from Alonzo Church's library that we were lucky enough to purchase at auction in New Jersey. Several of the books contain his signature, or a presentation inscription to him. Unfortunately, this copy does not have those signs of his ownership. [But please check our inventory for several others that do]. Still, the book contains 3 of his essays -- translated into German and printed here with his permission (as stated in the acknowledgments). So, it seems likely that the publisher sent a copy to him as a courtesy; and we believe this is almost certainly that copy. Alonzo Church (1903 - 1995) was professor of mathematics at Princeton University (1929-1967) and of mathematics and philosophy at UCLA (1967-1990). He was the founding editor of the JOURNAL OF SYMBOLIC LOGIC. Among his most influential contributions are Church's Theorem, Church's Thesis, and the Lambda Calculus. His work was of major importance in mathematical logic, recursion theory, theoretical computer science, and functional programming languages in general. Professor Church's creation of lambda calculus was the foundation for the LISP programming language and provided the semantic model for ALGOL. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, British Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Church is regarded by many as the greatest American logician of the 20th century. [For more on Church's contributions, see items 250, 251, 321, 394, and 533 in Hook and Norman's ORIGINS OF CYBERSPACE, A LIBRARY ON THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING...]. First Collected Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine condition/No Jacket. vi, 372pp. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.