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Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
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by: Douglas R. Hofstadter
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Sales Rank: 1769
Basic Books
Released: 1999-02-04 |
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Media: Paperback (1)
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Amazon.com Review
Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is still something of a marvel. Besides being a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity, this book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Gödel. It also looks at the prospects for computers and artificial intelligence (AI) for mimicking human thought. For the general reader and the computer techie alike, this book still sets a standard for thinking about the future of computers and their relation to the way we think. Hofstadter's great achievement in Gödel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (like undecidability, recursion, and 'strange loops') accessible and remarkably entertaining. Borrowing a page from Lewis Carroll (who might well have been a fan of this book), each chapter presents dialogue between the Tortoise and Achilles, as well as other characters who dramatize concepts discussed later in more detail. Allusions to Bach's music (centering on his Musical Offering) and Escher's continually paradoxical artwork are plentiful here. This more approachable material lets the author delve into serious number theory (concentrating on the ramifications of Gödel's Theorem of Incompleteness) while stopping along the way to ponder the work of a host of other mathematicians, artists, and thinkers. The world has moved on since 1979, of course. The book predicted that computers probably won't ever beat humans in chess, though Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. And the vinyl record, which serves for some of Hofstadter's best analogies, is now left to collectors. Sections on recursion and the graphs of certain functions from physics look tantalizing, like the fractals of recent chaos theory. And AI has moved on, of course, with mixed results. Yet Gödel, Escher, Bach remains a remarkable achievement. Its intellectual range and ability to let us visualize difficult mathematical concepts help make it one of this century's best for anyone who's interested in computers and their potential for real intelligence. --Richard Dragan Topics Covered: J.S. Bach, M.C. Escher, Kurt Gödel: biographical information and work, artificial intelligence (AI) history and theories, strange loops and tangled hierarchies, formal and informal systems, number theory, form in mathematics, figure and ground, consistency, completeness, Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, recursive structures, theories of meaning, propositional calculus, typographical number theory, Zen and mathematics, levels of description and computers; theory of mind: neurons, minds and thoughts; undecidability; self-reference and self-representation; Turing test for machine intelligence.
Product Description
Douglas Hofstadter’s book is concerned directly with the nature of “maps” or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel Escher and Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.
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Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
- Paperback: 832 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books; 1999-02-04
- Label: Basic Books
- Studio: Basic Books
- ISBN: 0465026567
- Average Customer Review: based on 245 reviews
- Sales Rank in Books: #1769
Avg. Customer Review:
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Wrong Language 2008-11-29
Comment: The book was fine, I guess. Except it was in Spanish instead of English. I'd like to return it and get the English version.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not my kind of philosophy 2008-10-14
Comment: This book is boring. It doesn't really tell you anything, kind of "all form, no substance". A cloud of a book.
I approached it a few times in the past, seeing it on top of many bestseller charts, but each time got scared away by apparent lack of clarity - when you open this book at random, you always face something unexpected - math, music, art, insects, human brains, DNA, viruses, zen, artificial intelligence, talking turtles, you name it, and always in different form.
Anyway, I thought to myself one day - it still must be a special book, it is rated so high, and it looks mysteriously clever, and so I have to read it through to understand. And I did. Geez, was it boring.
This book is 800 pages of chasing its own tail. It is full of curiousities, but no rigor, no plot, no structure. For the first 200 pages or so, reading tales seems fascinating, just imagine (you think to yourself) what the author has to offer when it gets to the point ! Never happens. As you reach page 600, you clench your teeth still hoping that there must be some sort of revelation ahead, even if on the last page. None.
These three things is this book about:
1. Self-reference. The great deal of the book is dedicated to approaching the proof of the Godel's theorem which in some sense says that a system cannot understand itself.
2. Form vs. substance. This ranges from extracting meanings from messages on different levels, to having different levels of interpreting the situation.
3. Infinity and different sorts of infinities. This only helps to fog things up. Can't spit without hitting a paradox. And this is presented rather informally.
Speaking of which, EVERYTHING in this book is presented informally. There is no facts, no proofs, no math, no logical reasoning, no conclusions, just a stream of consciousness, which twirls around and around.
It doesn't ask nor answer any single question straight. It's a philosophy, I see, but even a philosopher has to take sides, but the author does not. There is no side here really.
The discussed topics are indeed interesting and mind-provoking, for the first 200 pages even fascinating, like I said, but then it becomes pointless and boring. The only thing I want to ask after reading this book is "SO WHAT ?".
I wish I spent the time on some other book. Something with a plot.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Computer Science 2008-09-26
Comment: Godel, Escher and Bach, written by Douglas Hofstadter, while the title would suggest it is discussion of a mathematician, an artist, and a composer, is a complex examination of how human beings develop perception and meaning. More specifically, the book explores, through a series of dialogues and narrations, how symbols, thought and language are all intertwined and how reality is essentially a composition of overlapping meanings and perceptions. The book challenges the reader to observe the system of symbolic meanings around him or her objectively.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
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Summary: An Incredible Intellectual Romp 2008-08-27
Comment: Early this summer at a computer programming conference I found myself with a group of programmers of different ages and nationalities. The one thing we all had in common is that we'd read this book while in high school or college and found it fascinating. For some of us the book was life changing. Most of us rediscovered a love of math that our high school education had nearly destroyed. Many of us became programmers because of it. The book may seem to be dated in some respects after 20 plus years, but on the whole it is as relevant and exciting today as it was when it was first published.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Literate, Facinating, Readable 2008-08-12
Comment: This is a work of incredible depth and scope. From number theory to cognition to genetics, Hofstadter offers some incredible insights about the way we and the world work. One word of advice: don't worry if you can't understand all of his ideas. This book is so chock-full of content that most readers could spend a decade plowing through it, only to find that they've missed something important. Just read it. You'll get some of it, and that's enough.
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