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Loading... Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979)by Douglas R. Hofstadter
  
Favourite Books (87) » 14 more One Book, Many Authors (225) Reiny (16) Swinging Seventies (59) KayStJ's to-read list (643) Entender el mundo (37) I Can't Finish This Book (184) Unread books (956)   bringbackbooks | Jun 16, 2020 |  from Randall Munroe. Mouseover says: 'This is the reference implementation of the self-referential joke.' ------------------------ I know, I know, I know. I'm just kidding myself. I'm as likely to read this as a book on string theory. (Please don't. Please don't tell me I have read a book on string theory, I'm trying to forget the whole sordid story.) But. I hope you like this. A friend of mine established The Harvester Press in the 1970s. He did it on a wing and a prayer, he was a young teaching academic who couldn't find in print the old literary books he wanted to use as texts and so he set about publishing them. He was probably as surprised as anybody when the idea quickly became viable. He put together a list of books, sold them as a subscription to libraries and away he went. He wasn't an academic any more, he was a proper publisher with a strong reputation for intellectually high end output. At some point he got sent a completely insane looking ms, ridiculously long, bits of paper stuck on bits of paper, all these pictures which hadn't any copyright permission, and as for the title...well, who was going to buy a book called that....he sent it back with a polite letter. Some years later he was in NY lunching with the boss of Basic Books, a US academic publisher. He wanted to publish this strange ms. he'd been given. As he was describing it, John interrupted with 'Godel, Escher, Bach I presume?' Evidently Hofstadter had gotten lucky and had on loan a very early word processor. The whole thing was no longer the shambles it once was. Basic Books was keen. John got talked into taking some thousands of copies. This turned out well for him, but. What he had lost. Ouch. Godel, Escher, Bach in English and in translation would have made him many millions. I won't say he cried about it, but he did ask for a discount on the books he was buying. After such a sad tale it was impossible to say no. bringbackbooks | Jun 16, 2020 | Quite an undertaking. Bouncing between composition, mathematics, artificial intelligence, genetics, linguistics, art, and a host of other topics, Hofstadter weaves his theory of self-recursive "strange loops" throughout this massive book. There are probably only a handful of people who would be deeply engaged on every topic he covers, but when the book was engrossing, it was profoundly so. Particularly, in the chapters, "Brains and Thoughts" and "Minds and Thoughts," as well as the concluding chapter, "Strange Loops, or Tangled Hierarchies," he addressed some of the most absorbing themes of the book. In a few years, after further reading on some of the related topics, it would be interesting to revisit these sections. (  ) drbrand | Jun 8, 2020 | 'What is a self, and how can a self come out of inaminate matter?' This is the riddle that drove Hofstadter to write this extraordinary book. Linking together the music of J.S. Bach, the graphic art of Escher and the mathematical theorems of Godel, as well as ideas drawn from logic, biology, psychology, physics and linguistics, Douglas Hofstadter illuminates one of the greatest mysteries of modern science: the nature of human thought processes. 'Every few decades an unknown author brings outa book of such depth, clarity, range, wit, beauty and originality that it is recognized at once as a major literary event. This is such a work' - Martin Gardner Source: Publisher Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, also known as GEB, is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Source: Wikipedia Shiseida.Aponte | May 30, 2020 | It was not exactly what I thought I was getting myself into when I started, but informative. I will read it again someday. Most interesting is how much has come to pass that was thought difficult or impossible at the time the book was written. ( ) dpevers | May 26, 2020 | no reviews | add a review
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from Randall Munroe. Mouseover says: 'This is the reference implementation of the self-referential joke.'
------------------------
I know, I know, I know. I'm just kidding myself. I'm as likely to read this as a book on string theory. (Please don't. Please don't tell me I have read a book on string theory, I'm trying to forget the whole sordid story.) But. I hope you like this.
A friend of mine established The Harvester Press in the 1970s. He did it on a wing and a prayer, he was a young teaching academic who couldn't find in print the old literary books he wanted to use as texts and so he set about publishing them. He was probably as surprised as anybody when the idea quickly became viable. He put together a list of books, sold them as a subscription to libraries and away he went. He wasn't an academic any more, he was a proper publisher with a strong reputation for intellectually high end output.
At some point he got sent a completely insane looking ms, ridiculously long, bits of paper stuck on bits of paper, all these pictures which hadn't any copyright permission, and as for the title...well, who was going to buy a book called that....he sent it back with a polite letter.
Some years later he was in NY lunching with the boss of Basic Books, a US academic publisher. He wanted to publish this strange ms. he'd been given. As he was describing it, John interrupted with 'Godel, Escher, Bach I presume?' Evidently Hofstadter had gotten lucky and had on loan a very early word processor. The whole thing was no longer the shambles it once was. Basic Books was keen.
John got talked into taking some thousands of copies. This turned out well for him, but. What he had lost. Ouch. Godel, Escher, Bach in English and in translation would have made him many millions. I won't say he cried about it, but he did ask for a discount on the books he was buying. After such a sad tale it was impossible to say no.