Download Gödel Escher Bach An Eternal Golden Braid Douglas R Hofstadter 9780465026562 Books

Product details Paperback 824 pages Publisher Basic Books; Anniversary edition (February 5, 1999) Language English ISBN-10 0465026567

Gödel Escher Bach An Eternal Golden Braid Douglas R Hofstadter 9780465026562 Books Reviews

• GEB is a singularity of very cool ideas.
  
  Some of the topics explored artificial intelligence, cognitive science, mathematics, programming, consciousness, zen, philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, genetics, physics, music, art, logic, infinity, paradox, self-similarity. Metamathematics. Metathinking. Meta-everything.
  
  The author said he was trying to make the point that consciousness was recursive, a kind of mental fractal. Your mind will certainly feel that way when you are done.
  
  This is not a dry discussion of these topics. The author recognizes that he's exploring things that are intrinsically fascinating and fun, and has fun with them the whole way through. He doesn't just discuss the ideas, he demonstrates them, sometimes while he's discussing them, in clever and subtle ways.
  
  Inbetween chapters, he switches to a dialogue format between fantasy characters; here he plays with the ideas being discussed, and performs postmodern literary experiments. For example, one of his dialogues makes sense read both forwards and backwards. In another, the characters jump into a book, and then jump deeper into a book that was in the book. In yet another, a programmer calmly explains the function and output of a chatbot while the chatbot calmly explains the function and output of the programmer. I find the author's sense of humor in these delightful.
  
  In a word, it's brilliant. GEB combines the playful spirit of Lewis Carroll, the labyrinthine madness of Borges, the structural perfectionism of Joyce, the elegant beauty of mathematics, and the quintessential fascination of mind, all under one roof. It's become something of a cult phenomenon, and it has its own subreddit, r/GEB, and even its own MIT course.
  
  Does the book succeed in its goal? One of the common criticisms is that the author never gets to the point and proves his thesis, and instead spends time on endlessly swirling diversions. But I don't blame him; the task of connecting mind to math is insanely speculative territory. All he can do is spiral the topic and view it from every conceivable direction. He decided to take a loopy approach to a loopy idea, and I think that's very fitting. If you want a more linear approach to the same idea, you could read I Am A Strange Loop. However, the way GEB weaves a tapestry of interrelated ideas, rather than focusing on just one, is a major part of its charm.
  
  In the grand line of reductionism, where we in theory reduce consciousness to cognitive science to neuroscience to biology to chemistry to physics to math to metamath, GEB positions itself at the wraparound point at unsigned infinity, where the opposite ends of the spectrum meet.
  
  It is an utter gem, a classic, and a pleasure to read. I cannot recommend it enough.
• I have had a copy of this wonderful book ever since it was published. I went looking for my copy the other day and could not find my copy! Instant panic. So glad to have another copy. I must have loaned it to someone, I think. At any rate, it is essential for any intellectual's library. Also, Douglas Hofstadter has a wonderful sense of humor and he manages the improbable job of linking three extraordinarily, uniquely creative icons of Western culture.
• Gödel, Escher, Bach is the type of book that one is lucky to read once in a lifetime. Or perhaps this statement is not true. I found my copy used, with withered pages and a somewhat aged spine. The act of reading was a strange bittersweet loop, for as I found my enjoyment and understanding growing throughout, parallel the binding started to give, a bulk of pages started to break off, a page or two turned too quickly resulted in a tear, and I found the book aging before my eyes. I'm afraid that my copy will never be what it once was, but then such is life. Even a damaged book such as this one can bring insight; just as Beethoven could still compose symphonies while deaf, or Van Gogh could still paint with a missing ear, my personal copy of this slightly tattered book has spoken to me in a unique way and I am grateful to have found its voice before it was too far gone to enjoy.
• This book completely changed my life when I read it in high school. The connections the author makes between art, music, math, and formal systems is not only clever, but profound. The dialogues between the characters that accompany each chapter and humorous but educational. Some chapters are a breeze while others -- especially the one on TNT (Typographical Number Theory) -- are difficult. Yet, taken as a whole, the book is a cohesive treatise on the marvels of nature and life itself. Decades later, here I am, still in a related field, and yet always coming back to GEB as the foundation of my intellectual journey.
• I am proudly one of the many fanboys of this book. While I don't think it is quite accessible to just any audience, I do think that it is a must read for any academic, particularly in a mathematically rigorous field. The book meanders, taking its time, through a myriad of topics, from music theory to painting to artificial intelligence. At each step of the way, however, Hofstadter includes "meta" jokes and puzzles about the ideas in the work, which helps to tie the book together until the disparate ideas are weaved together at the end under the auspices of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. In the introduction to this edition, Hofstadter laments that so few readers were able to pick out his true thesis in the work. His explanation is that the book is about "how cognition and thinking emerge from well-hidden neurological mechanisms." However, don't expect a dry, direct approach to that question. Hofstadter couches that single question in an expansive frame that offers an indelible glimpse into the mind of a true thinker.