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Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden…
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Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

by Douglas Hofstadter

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
8,89569314 (4.36)2 / 168
AI (110) art (273) artificial intelligence (265) Bach (97) cognition (37) cognitive science (172) computer science (159) computers (58) consciousness (86) Escher (96) Godel (105) history (46) intelligence (43) language (41) logic (365) mathematics (1,149) metamathematics (47) mind (75) music (424) non-fiction (622) own (52) philosophy (1,111) physics (56) popular science (54) psychology (73) read (67) recursion (48) science (718) to-read (88) unread (77)
  1. 100
    Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (Zaklog)
    Zaklog: Cryptonomicon strikes me as the kind of book that Hofstadter would write if he wrote fiction. Both books are complex, with discursive passages on mathematics and a positively weird sense of humor. If you enjoyed (rather than endured) the explanatory sections on cryptography and the charts of Waterhouse's love life (among other, rarely charted things) you should really like this book.… (more)
  2. 60
    Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis (tomduck, EerierIdyllMeme)
    EerierIdyllMeme: An obvious suggestion (surprised it's not here already). Both are creative and fictional riffing off of formal logic and incompleteness.
  3. 20
    A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper by John Allen Paulos (heidialice)
    heidialice: GEB is a thousand times as intense, but if you enjoyed the parts about self-referentiality it's worth a skim. Conversely, if GEB is just too much, Paulos' concise introduction to the theme is very accessible.
  4. 21
    A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram (Anonymous user)
  5. 10
    Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern by Douglas Hofstadter (JFDR)
  6. 00
    Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (EerierIdyllMeme)
    EerierIdyllMeme: A few similar themes (Bach, human cognition) come up in similar ways.
  7. 00
    Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers (hippietrail)
  8. 02
    The Flanders Panel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (P_S_Patrick)
    P_S_Patrick: Arturo Perez-Reverte has recieved inspiration for his excellent mystery thriller from Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach, even without some of the chapter introduciton quotes, that much is clear. He uses the bewildering Escherian theme of worlds within a world, Godels incompleteness theorum is alluded to in the monologue of one character, and Bach is discussed in relevance to the mystery too, along with a few miscellaneous paradoxes which are also slipped in, in a similar spirit in which they permeate the more complex non-fictional work. Non-fiction readers who have enjoyed GEB should be amused by the Flanders panel, and I think they should enjoy it even if they do not often dip into fiction. It would be harder to recommend GEB to fans of the Flanders Panel, due to its sheer length, but if you were intrigued by the themes in the story then it should at least be worth finding GEB in a library and dipping into it.… (more)
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Showing 1-5 of 68 (next | show all)
Quite possibly the most conceptually challenging book I've ever read, and it was worth every page. ( )
  MattP225 | Apr 27, 2013 |
I read this book as part of a college course about the book back in 1982. I remember enjoying it. Much food for thought. I feel it's time to re-read it. So it's going in my to-read shelf. I wonder how well it's aged. Since it's such an unusual book it'll either show it's age or it'll be timeless. My copy has not aged well. I'm reluctant to buy it again new, but I can probably find a used one in better shape. When I pulled the book of the shelf it had a bookmark on page 480, Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker. Note this copy has become very fragile. I'll try to find a used copy. ( )
  clmerle | Apr 2, 2013 |
Can I get a gold star, teacher? I started reading this book many years ago and put it down many times, picking it up again because the ideas in it stuck with me. Often, I would find myself reminded of it during certain long and interesting conversations with friends, in the car, or late at night. "Oh, that reminds me of this bit from GEB ...", I would say to blank stares.
It is hard to recommend a book you nearly didn't finish but GEB is best read in small episodes. Give it time to percolate. I may not understand everything Hofstadter writes, but it is there, along with the Tortoise and Achilles, bubbling away down in the various levels of my noggin. By design, I believe, and well played. ( )
  angerie | Mar 31, 2013 |
A challenging, great book that guides you through many abstract notions on symmetry, mathematics and logic. I wish I had read it as a young adult, as it would definitely widen the horizon of any thoughtful teenager - but it is a book that will

It is clumsy at times, but with its fictional dialogs it is a great entertaining approach to mathematical philosophy - quite a tome, so not one book that you may want to pick up every year, but definitely worth a re-read every so often. ( )
  PaolaM | Mar 31, 2013 |
I read this so long ago that I really think I need to re-read it.
  KrisR | Mar 30, 2013 |
Showing 1-5 of 68 (next | show all)
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Douglas Hofstadterprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Wahlén, JanTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, came to power in 1740.
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In its absolute barest form, Gödel's discovery involves the translation of an ancient paradox in philosophy into mathematical terms. That paradox is the so-called Epimenides paradox, or liar paradox. Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: “All Cretans are liars.”
Whereas the Epimenides statement creates a paradox since it is neither true nor false, the Gödel sentence G is unprovable (inside P.M.) but true. The grand conclusion? That the system of Principia Mathematica is “incomplete”—there are true statements of number theory which its methods of proof are too weak to demonstrate.
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Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0465026567, Paperback)

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.

(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:19:43 -0400)

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A scientist and mathematician explores the mystery and complexity of human thought processes from an interdisciplinary point of view.

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An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.

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