This Book Needs No Title: A Budget of Living Paradoxes

by Raymond M. Smullyan

Book Overview

From Simon & Schuster, This Book Needs No Title is Raymond Smullyan's budget of living paradoxes--the author of What is the Name of This Book?

Including eighty paradoxes, logical labyrinths, and intriguing enigmas progress from light fables and fancies to challenging Zen exercises and a novella and probe the timeless questions of philosophy and life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671628313
• ISBN13: 9780671628314
• Release Date: October 1986
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

An Intelligent Community Initiative Top 500 Book

One of the chief goals of The Intelligent Community Initiative is improving the intellectual ability of average citizens, and if you wanted to find a book not only superbly readable but capable of exercising the reader's critical thinking faculties in a way not typically done by the average book, you don't have to look any farther than this masterpiece by Raymond Smullyan. Extremely readable and thought-provoking, the essays in this book raise many important issues. We found the chapter "Closed Systems of Thought" highly useful in explaining the world-view of Richard Dawkins in our analysis of Dawkins' book, THE IPOD TUTOR: THE ARGUMENT AGAINST RICHARD DAWKINS' THE GOD DELUSION. This is an Intelligent Community Initiative Top 500 Book.

Paradoxical reflections

Raymond Smullyan, of whom I am a longtime reader, is probably best known as a creator of fiendishly brilliant logic puzzles. He's also a mathematical logician of high caliber (and a magician, and a pianist, and . . . )But some of his lesser-known works have consisted of philosophical reflections on a wide range of subjects (which nevertheless include a common thread that is devilishly difficult to pin down). There was _The Tao Is Silent_ (for my money, still his best); there was _5000 B.C._ (currently out of print); and just recently he's published _Who Knows?_ (which I recommend too).This is one from 1980, and it's one of few "older" Smullyan works currently available in print. It's not a collection of logic puzzles; it's a collection of essays and short reflections of very much the same "flavor" as _The Tao Is Silent_.As always, Smullyan is a sheer delight to read. In his hands, philosophy becomes what it should always be: a form of intellectual play (and nonetheless "serious" for that, although it surely isn't solemn!).Get this while it's available. And if you like Smullyan, also check out the titles I've already mentioned, as well as his autobiographical _Some Interesting Memories: A Paradoxical Life_. He's a gifted man as well as pleasant and stimulating intellectual company.

another gem

This is another great book of puzzles by Smullyan. If you liked Satan, Cantor, and Infinity, and What is the Name of this Book? then you will like this.