<p>I'm taking a class on Logic in Computer Science, and we've covered propositional logic, predicate logic and second-order logic. Students are familiar with model theory.</p>
<p>They are also acquainted with  theory of computation (turing machines, halting problem, etc).</p>
<p>Now I'm planning to teach a few classes on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (total 3 to 6 hours of lecture).</p>
<p>However, this topic is known to be confusing, especially philosophically - so I'm wondering how I should go about teaching this topic while still keeping it interesting. Any ideas?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-04T17:39:14.147Z
See [Eric Hehner](https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/God.pdf)
Rushi
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-12-03T16:07:44.113Z
Suggested reading 1: Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach". This masterpiece contains a full proof of Gödel's theorem, along with philosophical discussions (about the theorem, about mathematics, about consciousness and intelligence, about zen philosophy) and art analyses of Bach's music and Escher's paintings.
Stef
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-12-03T16:09:59.783Z
Suggested reading 2: Raymond Smullyan's "The princess or the tiger". In appearance this book is "just" a collection of fun riddles. The first half of the book contains riddles about people who are lying and telling the truth starting easy and getting progressively more convoluted. The second half are arithmetic riddles that progressively trick the reader into figuring a proof of Gödel's theorem. Really!!
Stef
<best-practice><mathematics><cs-theory>
How to teach Godel's incompleteness Theorems?
# How to teach Godel's incompleteness Theorems?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2023-11-02)

I'm taking a class on Logic in Computer Science, and we've covered propositional logic, predicate logic and second-order logic. Students are familiar with model theory.

They are also acquainted with theory of computation (turing machines, halting problem, etc).

Now I'm planning to teach a few classes on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (total 3 to 6 hours of lecture).

However, this topic is known to be confusing, especially philosophically - so I'm wondering how I should go about teaching this topic while still keeping it interesting. Any ideas?

**Tags:** best-practice, mathematics, cs-theory

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: See [Eric Hehner](https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/God.pdf)  
> **username_2**: Suggested reading 1: Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach". This masterpiece contains a full proof of Gödel's theorem, along with philosophical discussions (about the theorem, about mathematics, about consciousness and intelligence, about zen philosophy) and art analyses of Bach's music and Escher's paintings.  
> **username_2**: Suggested reading 2: Raymond Smullyan's "The princess or the tiger". In appearance this book is "just" a collection of fun riddles. The first half of the book contains riddles about people who are lying and telling the truth starting easy and getting progressively more convoluted. The second half are arithmetic riddles that progressively trick the reader into figuring a proof of Gödel's theorem. Really!!  

---

## 0 answers

