Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning, Volume 2: Logic, Symbolic and Mathematical

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954. First Edition. Large octavo with brick-red cloth boards; bibliography; tables and illustrations; 190p A very good (+) copy, clean and tight; slightest wear to corners and edges; spine lightly sunned. Hardcover.

Out of Print. This is Nobel Laureate Donald Glaser's copy, with a spine label of his personal research library. For more books from Glaser's library, search using the keycode: GLSR. Glaser won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1961 for the invention of the Bubble Chamber. From WorldCat: "A guide to the practical art of plausible reasoning, this book has relevance in every field of intellectual activity. Professor Polya, a world-famous mathematician from Stanford University, uses mathematics to show how hunches and guesses play an important part in even the most rigorously deductive science. He explains how solutions to problems can be guessed at; good guessing is often more important than rigorous deduction in finding correct solutions. Vol. II, on Patterns of Plausible Inference, attempts to develop a logic of plausibility. What makes some evidence stronger and some weaker? How does one seek evidence that will make a suspected truth more probable? These questions involve philosophy and psychology as well as mathematics."