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Indeholder "Forord af Tor Nørretranders", "Oversigt", "Liste over bogens illustrationer", "Forfatterens tak", "Del I: GEB", " Indledning: Et musico-logisk offer", " - Invention for tre stemmer", " Kapitel 1: MU-gåden", " - Invention for to stemmer", " Kapitel 2: Betydning og form i matematikken",
Intelligent tour-de-force af Hofstadter. Nogle af rablerierne er ret syrede, men der er som regel en intelligent tanke bagved.
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" - Sonate for Akilleus uden akkompagnement ", " Kapitel 3: Figur og baggrund", " - Contrakrostipunctus ", " Kapitel 4: Modsigelsesfrihed, fuldstændighed og geometri", " - Lille harmonisk labyrint ", " Kapitel 5: Rekursive strukturer og processer", " - Kanon med intervallisk augmentation ", " Kapitel 6: Hvor sidder betydningen?", " - Kromatisk fantasi og fejde ", " Kapitel 7: Logik i udsagn", " - Krebsekanon ", " Kapitel 8: Typografisk talteori", " - Et MU-offer ", " Kapitel 9: Mumon og Gödel ", "Del II: EGB", " Præludium ... ", " Kapitel 10: Beskrivelsesniveauer og computersystemer ", " - .... Myre-fuga ", " Kapitel 11: Hjerner og tanker ", " - Engelsk-fransk-tysk suite ", " Kapitel 12: Bevidsthed og tanker ", " - Arie med diverse variationer ", " Kapitel 13: BlooP og FlooP og GlooP ", " - "Air" på G-strengen ", " Kapitel 14: Om sætninger, som ikke kan afgøres formalt i TNT og dermed beslægtede systemer ", " - Fødselsdagskantatetete... ", " Kapitel 15: At springe ud af systemet ", " - En tobaksrygers opbyggelige betragtninger ", " Kapitel 16: Selv-ref og selv-rep ", " - Magnifikrabben ", " Kapitel 17: Church, Turing, Tarski og andre ", " - SHRDLU bleibet meine Freude ", " Kapitel 18: Kunstig Intelligens: Tilbageblikke", " - Contrafactus ", " Kapitel 19: Kunstig Intelligens: Fremtidsudsigter ", " - Dovendyr-kanon ", " Kapitel 20: Mærkelige sløjfer eller sammenfiltrede hierarkier ", " - Ricercar i seks dele", "Noter", "Bibliografi", "Register".Intelligent tour-de-force af Hofstadter. Nogle af rablerierne er ret syrede, men der er som regel en intelligent tanke bagved.
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Genres
Publication
[Kbh.] : Aschehoug, 1992.
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, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more
User reviews
LibraryThing member aethercowboy
"Help. My mind has bent, and now I cannot unbend it!"
That was me after I finished reading Godel, Escher, Bach. This book, which is about, well, everything, takes the reader on a journey through mathematics, music, and art, and gives it a little twist just to keep one on one's mental toes.
A major
Not only does Hofstadter give us so much on logical themes, but he also gives the reader some puzzles too, particularly some that require multiple steps (though the answers are right in front of the reader's face at times).
This book is a must read for one who considers oneself a student of mathematics, art, or even music, or who has a strong admiration for most of these things. I suppose computer scientists could read it too.
Nevertheless, this is a great book, and a challenge, but definitely worth the read.
That was me after I finished reading Godel, Escher, Bach. This book, which is about, well, everything, takes the reader on a journey through mathematics, music, and art, and gives it a little twist just to keep one on one's mental toes.
A major
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theme is recursion, or self-referencing. If you're at all familiar with any of the GEBs, you'll see this in Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Escher's Drawing Hands, and Bach's Crab Canon. Other mathematicians, artists, and musicians are introduced as well, providing more on this Eternal Golden Braid.Not only does Hofstadter give us so much on logical themes, but he also gives the reader some puzzles too, particularly some that require multiple steps (though the answers are right in front of the reader's face at times).
This book is a must read for one who considers oneself a student of mathematics, art, or even music, or who has a strong admiration for most of these things. I suppose computer scientists could read it too.
Nevertheless, this is a great book, and a challenge, but definitely worth the read.
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LibraryThing member qubex
There seems to be a lot of confusion about what this book is about, even the author laments the difficulty classifiers have in dealing with his work.
This is a book about meta. It's about how disparate forms of human endeavour and physical reality share higher-level descriptions, and how by twisting
This is a book about meta. It's about how disparate forms of human endeavour and physical reality share higher-level descriptions, and how by twisting
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and cross-wiring those descriptive patterns we get surprising, beautiful, satisfying results. Show Less
LibraryThing member brikis98
This is a book of brilliant insights separated by hundreds of pages of tangents.
It touches on a ridiculous number of topics: number theory, music theory, fugues, art, physics, linguistics, literature, cognition, calculus, logic, programming, recursion, molecular biology, Zen, and much more. Many
It's a shame, because all of this extra material makes the book much harder to get through and actively distracts from some of the gems hidden within. If a good editor had chopped out ~300 pages, the book would've been perfect. As it is, it's only worth reading if you're willing to put in a ton of effort to get to some of the delightful parts.
My absolute favorite is the analogy that compares the human mind to a colony of ants; this is the absolute closest I've come to a vague understanding of how an intelligence could emerge from a bunch of simple, unintelligent parts. If you are skimming the book, make sure not to skip that chapter :)
Some great quotes:
“Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law”
Tesler's Theorem: "AI is whatever hasn't been done yet".
“How gullible are you? Is your gullibility located in some "gullibility center" in your brain? Could a neurosurgeon reach in and perform some delicate operation to lower your gullibility, otherwise leaving you alone? If you believe this, you are pretty gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation.”
“The paraphrase of Gödel's Theorem says that for any record player, there are records which it cannot play because they will cause its indirect self-destruction.”
"Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system, no matter how powerful—cannot lead to all truths."
"What is sacrificed is, of course, strict accuracy; what is gained is, I hope, a little insight."
"The naive assumption that all knowledge should be coded into passive pieces of data is actually contradicted by the most fundamental fact about computer design: that is, how to add, subtract, multiply, and so on is not coded into pieces of data stored in memory; it is, in fact, represented nowhere in memory, but rather in the wiring patterns of the hardware."
"When a human forgets, it most likely means that a high-level pointer has been lost - not that any information has been deleted or destroyed."
"It is amazing how deep this problem with the word 'the' is. It is probably safe to say that writing a program which can fully understand the top five words of English - 'the', 'of', 'and', 'a', and 'to' - would be equivalent to solving the entire problem of AI, and hence tantamount to knowing what intelligence and consciousness are."
"Perhaps the greatest contradiction in our lives, the hardest to handle, is the knowledge 'There was a time when I was not alive, and there will come a time when I am not alive.'"
"By the way, in passing, it is interesting to note that all results essentially dependent on the fusion of subject and object have been limitative results. In addition ot the limitative Theorems, there is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which says that measuring one quantity renders impossible the simultaneous measurement of a related quantity. I don't know why all those results are limitative."
It touches on a ridiculous number of topics: number theory, music theory, fugues, art, physics, linguistics, literature, cognition, calculus, logic, programming, recursion, molecular biology, Zen, and much more. Many
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of these are used as the basis for understanding cognition, knowledge and AI; some make for superb analogies to make it easier to understand these complicated topics; unfortunately, Hofstadter sometimes goes into way too much detail on these tangential topics, and occasionally, it just feels like he's showing off his (undeniably impressive) intellect. It's a shame, because all of this extra material makes the book much harder to get through and actively distracts from some of the gems hidden within. If a good editor had chopped out ~300 pages, the book would've been perfect. As it is, it's only worth reading if you're willing to put in a ton of effort to get to some of the delightful parts.
My absolute favorite is the analogy that compares the human mind to a colony of ants; this is the absolute closest I've come to a vague understanding of how an intelligence could emerge from a bunch of simple, unintelligent parts. If you are skimming the book, make sure not to skip that chapter :)
Some great quotes:
“Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law”
Tesler's Theorem: "AI is whatever hasn't been done yet".
“How gullible are you? Is your gullibility located in some "gullibility center" in your brain? Could a neurosurgeon reach in and perform some delicate operation to lower your gullibility, otherwise leaving you alone? If you believe this, you are pretty gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation.”
“The paraphrase of Gödel's Theorem says that for any record player, there are records which it cannot play because they will cause its indirect self-destruction.”
"Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system, no matter how powerful—cannot lead to all truths."
"What is sacrificed is, of course, strict accuracy; what is gained is, I hope, a little insight."
"The naive assumption that all knowledge should be coded into passive pieces of data is actually contradicted by the most fundamental fact about computer design: that is, how to add, subtract, multiply, and so on is not coded into pieces of data stored in memory; it is, in fact, represented nowhere in memory, but rather in the wiring patterns of the hardware."
"When a human forgets, it most likely means that a high-level pointer has been lost - not that any information has been deleted or destroyed."
"It is amazing how deep this problem with the word 'the' is. It is probably safe to say that writing a program which can fully understand the top five words of English - 'the', 'of', 'and', 'a', and 'to' - would be equivalent to solving the entire problem of AI, and hence tantamount to knowing what intelligence and consciousness are."
"Perhaps the greatest contradiction in our lives, the hardest to handle, is the knowledge 'There was a time when I was not alive, and there will come a time when I am not alive.'"
"By the way, in passing, it is interesting to note that all results essentially dependent on the fusion of subject and object have been limitative results. In addition ot the limitative Theorems, there is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which says that measuring one quantity renders impossible the simultaneous measurement of a related quantity. I don't know why all those results are limitative."
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LibraryThing member comfypants
Hofstadter argues his perspective on the nature of the mind and the potential of artificial intelligence, particularly with regards to how it relates to Gödel's Theorem (which is essentially about the number-theoretical equivalent of the statment "This sentence is false"). He educates the reader
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in all the background necessary to understand his arguments, which is a pretty incredible feat for a book that could easily have been purely technical. He goes off on frequent tangents, whimsical diversions and involved analogies (including illustrating his ideas with examples from Escher, Bach, genetics, language and Zen Buddhism). This book is enormous. It's not just 750 pages; it's 750 pages of a very dense book on complex topics. It's accessible to any layperson who wants to make the effort, and it's worth the time involved, but don't start it unless you're willing to commit a lot of time to reading it. I highly recommend getting the 1990's anniversary edition, as the new introduction by the author puts the book into perspective and clearly outlines his argument and the direction it will take, something woefully neglected in the original book. Show Less
LibraryThing member Lyndatrue
This book hit me like a brick wall. When I first bought it, I thought I would read a bit at a time, and digest what I'd read, and take my time with it. Nope. I started reading, read through dinner, and quit finally when I fell asleep in the chair, nearly two-thirds of the way through. I read the
This is the only book of his I kept, and it is showing its age. It still lives on a bookshelf, where I can pick it up and read favorite parts. It is no accident that it falls open at Chapter XVIII (Artificial Intelligence). This should be in your library, and as paper, not on a kindle.
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rest the next morning, and then started all over again.This is the only book of his I kept, and it is showing its age. It still lives on a bookshelf, where I can pick it up and read favorite parts. It is no accident that it falls open at Chapter XVIII (Artificial Intelligence). This should be in your library, and as paper, not on a kindle.
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LibraryThing member kiparsky
This is probably one of the most consistently difficult and enlightening books I've ever come across. Completely wonderful - it took me three tries over five years to finish it the first time, and every time I feel like I learned more than I'd previously known was possible. I've read it several
It's possible that this book is actually infinitely deep: that it will continue to unfold new ideas to you as long as you continue to read it. I don't know if that's true - but I'm going to keep testing it.
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times since, and each time I've found new ideas I hadn't worked through before. It's possible that this book is actually infinitely deep: that it will continue to unfold new ideas to you as long as you continue to read it. I don't know if that's true - but I'm going to keep testing it.
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LibraryThing member P_S_Patrick
This book covers a lot of topics in its search for the understanding and elucidation of the elusive consciousness. Philosophy, maths, logic, physics, genetics, music, art, and artificial intelligence and computer programming are all incorporated in varying measures in this epic trawl of recurring
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elements and complex ideas. It is a heavily satisfying book to read if you have an interest in this sort of thing, though I imagine that some people really wouldn't have time for it. Despite the serious subject matter the book is lightened in tone by the generous amount of tongue in cheek humour. This is quite a long book, and would have perhaps been too much of a trial to get through without the entertaining dialogues which precede each chapter. They do serve a purpose though, apart from to break up the heavier parts, and that is to introduce concepts, (although often in masked way), that will be discussed in the next chapter. The analogies made between such initially unrelated seeming things throughout the book is sometimes startling, and almost always clever. This author seems to have a great insight into all kinds of interesting things, and I personally found this book fascinating, but I suspect from some of the things I've heard said that this book has had somewhat of a love hate reception. For this reason I can't really recommend this book firmly to anyone, but I think that potential readers will themselves be able to work out if they will enjoy it by checking the main themes off against their interests. It's the best non fiction book I have read in quite a while. Show Less
LibraryThing member Arthwollipot
For me, this is the book that started it all. I had no interest at all in science, computing or mathematics before I read GEB.
It has been called impossible to read. To be sure, it took me many tries before I got through it cover-to-cover. But the intriguing adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise
This book changed my life.
It has been called impossible to read. To be sure, it took me many tries before I got through it cover-to-cover. But the intriguing adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise
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kept me coming back to it, and I eventually cracked it - at which point I realised what it was all about. Hofstadter elaborates on the theme in his later books (especially "I Am A Strange Loop") but the core of the idea is right here.This book changed my life.
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LibraryThing member Reysbro
took me 3 tries to get through it but quite simply an amazing mind-opener
LibraryThing member Arctic-Stranger
A delightful romp through the world of math, music and philosophy. I am not a math person, but had little trouble following Hofstadter down his various rabbit holes. Engaging, intelligent, articulate. Everything a good book should be.
LibraryThing member shawnd
This is somewhere between a Grand Unified Theory of science, culture, and spirituality, and something ny Ray Kurzweil. It defies description. It's a nonfiction book, this is clear. The topics the book revolves around are Godel's Theorem, the artwork of MC Escher, and music of Bach. These tie in
The 'dialogues' - which is perhaps where Ray Kurzweil got the idea - are a recurring segment having a Turtle converse with Achilles in a Dialogue back and forth using the Socratic method of sorts. It tends to annoy and does not provide educational benefit. Further, my simple mind could not grasp a good 50% of the mathematical formulas in the book - so I suspect this book is more rewarding the more numerical intelligence one has. Even so, everyone should take a crack at this book and for many I suspect it is a mind-changer.
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with topics like Zen Buddhism and Zen riddles called koans; Alan Turing and artificial intelligence; recursiveness in nature and everywhere; and DNA. The author does not provide a treatise on each of these topics. Rather, he finds common underpinnings to each of these and finds how they weave together to exist and effect our world. As another reviewer said, if one reads this book, they will never forget it. Interrelationships serve to teach, confuse, and syncretize something beyond all of this. Here's a quote from the description of one of the chapters: "In a way, Zen ideas bear a methaphorical resemblance to some contemporary ideas in the philosophy of mathematics." The 'dialogues' - which is perhaps where Ray Kurzweil got the idea - are a recurring segment having a Turtle converse with Achilles in a Dialogue back and forth using the Socratic method of sorts. It tends to annoy and does not provide educational benefit. Further, my simple mind could not grasp a good 50% of the mathematical formulas in the book - so I suspect this book is more rewarding the more numerical intelligence one has. Even so, everyone should take a crack at this book and for many I suspect it is a mind-changer.
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LibraryThing member AlexTheHunn
Hofstadter's monumental work defies classification into a single category. Although this is among the top ten books I've ever read, I still feel uncomfortable trying to describe it to someone who hasn't read it simply because it touches so many things that I sound deranged if I mention them all.
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And yet it is this amazing ability to connect such diverse topics that is at the heart of Hofstadter's book. Show Less
LibraryThing member jtburman
Instead of attending all the boring lectures in an upper-year AI class, I read this and some of the books it cited. I got an A+. (And the best thing is, you can read pieces and it still makes sense.)
LibraryThing member Stevil2001
I first read this book back in April 2004, after coming upon references to it in accounts of the writing of Castrovalva. It was one of five books I read that month, so I knew what I was in for in tackling a rereading. It's a sprawling work, using Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem as its starting
Though at times the book can be a bit dense, it's generally comprehensible to someone with no grounding in number theory, thanks to the fact that Hofstadter starts very, very small and works his way up to the big stuff. And I think I could have understood the more confusing stuff with time, but I felt as though I'd already spent more than enough on the book! I find Hofstadter's conclusions about the nature of intelligence most interesting, and I wish that more science fiction dealing with artificial intelligence made use of them, since they make sense to me. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of this dense, lengthy book are the dialogues that appear between chapters, featuring the character of Achilles and Mr. Tortoise discussing the ideas in the text of the book around them, usually in the context of absurdities such as journeying into an Escher print or inventing new and complicated record players. It is here that Hofstadter's deftness with wordplay and ability to twist ideas really sparkles.
Overall, I'm not sure if I understood the book more a second time or not. But when I did understand it, I found it quite fascinating and very thought-provoking. There's a ton of diverse ideas in here, and they're all quite good even if they don't always gel. But when he's focused, Hofstadter seems to come immensely close to explaining how our minds work and where they come from.
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point, and traveling through the music of Bach and the artwork of Escher to encompass many diverse ideas: number theory, canons and fugues, recursion, DNA, formal mathematical systems, Zen koans, artificial intelligence, and, ultimately, natural intelligence. It's a bit unfocused, a fact Hofstadter himself attempts to rectify with his new preface to this, the "twentieth anniversary edition", but for obvious reasons, putting a clarification of your conclusions in the front of your book is not entirely effective.Though at times the book can be a bit dense, it's generally comprehensible to someone with no grounding in number theory, thanks to the fact that Hofstadter starts very, very small and works his way up to the big stuff. And I think I could have understood the more confusing stuff with time, but I felt as though I'd already spent more than enough on the book! I find Hofstadter's conclusions about the nature of intelligence most interesting, and I wish that more science fiction dealing with artificial intelligence made use of them, since they make sense to me. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of this dense, lengthy book are the dialogues that appear between chapters, featuring the character of Achilles and Mr. Tortoise discussing the ideas in the text of the book around them, usually in the context of absurdities such as journeying into an Escher print or inventing new and complicated record players. It is here that Hofstadter's deftness with wordplay and ability to twist ideas really sparkles.
Overall, I'm not sure if I understood the book more a second time or not. But when I did understand it, I found it quite fascinating and very thought-provoking. There's a ton of diverse ideas in here, and they're all quite good even if they don't always gel. But when he's focused, Hofstadter seems to come immensely close to explaining how our minds work and where they come from.
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LibraryThing member datrappert
I've been thinking about reading this book for years. Probably since 1979, when it was first published, in fact. This is the 20th anniversary edition, and other than a new introduction by the author, where he acknowledges some of his bad predictions (e.g., the inability of a computer to beat a
Also, to correct one egregious mistake--Dvorak was never deaf. Hofstadter means Smetana, who in addition to being deaf, was also insane at the end of his life.
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human chess champion), the text is unchanged. This is both good and bad, I suppose. Since over 40 years have passed, and one of the major themes of the book is artificial intelligence, the lengthy discussions of how well it might be able to work are seriously dated. On the other hand, the intricate connections between the amusing conversations between Achilles, the Tortoise, the Crab, and later, the Sloth are very interconnected with the "straight" chapters with which they alternate. This book seems to flow from topic to topic almost randomly, but it all sort of hangs together. It will probably hang together even better if you really understand Hofstadter's flights into mathematics, number theory, and logic. At times, I got lost and there were a couple of times when I was afraid the book was going to become too dense to continue, but then it would take off in a different direction and the pleasure o reading it would return. In the end, I guess my takeaway is that the mind is a wonderfully complex thing; we can never never know for sure what we know; but through isomorphism, we can make sense out of a lot of things that seem daunting at first--like this book.Also, to correct one egregious mistake--Dvorak was never deaf. Hofstadter means Smetana, who in addition to being deaf, was also insane at the end of his life.
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LibraryThing member DCash
A brilliant book. Do not give up because of the seemingly pointless collection the first chapters constitute; the author IS goign somewhere..
LibraryThing member lorin
This is one of those books that everybody raves about, so I felt compelled to add it to my list. However, I wasn't as impressed with this book as the buzz indicates. I enjoy the subject matter very much, but this one didn't really speak to me.
LibraryThing member phiroze
A book about brilliance that appears to be too bright!
Still the statement that genius is about pattern generation and recognition is something that I have come to appreciate.
Still the statement that genius is about pattern generation and recognition is something that I have come to appreciate.
LibraryThing member jcopenha
Wow. A truly amazing look at intelligence. The first 400 pages or so are pretty difficult to get through. The rest of the book, while not much easier to understand goes much faster. This book provokes some great thoughts. The Dialogues at the beginning of every chapter are worth reading all by
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themselves. Show Less
LibraryThing member d.r.halliwell
This book was hard work, but a great pleasure to read. There were many ideas presented, explained and linked, but I think the author was all the time just building up to making his case that consciousness arises from self-referential loops ("strange-loops"). He didn't convince me, but I still
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intend to read this book again, and to enjoy it immensely, and to feel clever again. Show Less
LibraryThing member dandelionroots
I really hated this book at times; like, punch Hofstadter in the face for his "wit." Also, I was under the false impression that I was interested in number theory. While his discussion of AI, its definition and limits, was intriguing, it didn't blow my mind since the ideas have been part of pop
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culture for some time. Perhaps this book would have been more worthwhile to me if I'd read it when it was first published. Show Less
LibraryThing member sashame
This is certainly the greatest book of popular science I've encountered or heard of yet--it's accessible, engaging, playful, but also very deep and original in its analysis. It gives brief intellectual history where necessary, and repeats the same arguments in many surprisingly different ways for
But its ultimate ignorance/dismissal of the social world, assertion of objective meaning, and computational theory of mind force me to give it a lower rating.
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comprehension.But its ultimate ignorance/dismissal of the social world, assertion of objective meaning, and computational theory of mind force me to give it a lower rating.
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LibraryThing member jjvors
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Where do I start? The book's theme is Gödel's proof that any system of logic can be shown to be incomplete--one can't get to all truths using it. This is was a revolutionary thought to mathematics and still is. But Douglas
Have I mentioned the book is entertaining? Hofstadter fills the book with amusing stories and dialogues depicting his points as well as puns and jokes. Just imagine Lewis Carroll mixed with a book on computer programming. He also devotes several chapters inventing special purpose programming languages and theorems for illustrative purposes.
The first time I read it, about 1981, I was was mesmerized by his intellectual tour de force. The second time, 2015, I saw clearly his bias in favor of a mechanistic understanding of human intelligence. If your interested in human and computer intelligence, programming, and philosophy, this should be your cup of tea.
Where do I start? The book's theme is Gödel's proof that any system of logic can be shown to be incomplete--one can't get to all truths using it. This is was a revolutionary thought to mathematics and still is. But Douglas
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Hofstadter uses this as a unifying theme for his theory of how human intelligence and consciousness emerges from the underlying structure of neurons. He uses Bach's fugues and Escher's self referential paintings to illustrate the contradictions introduced in mathematics and logical hierarchies. He proposes such self references, such "strange loops" give rise to our intelligence.Have I mentioned the book is entertaining? Hofstadter fills the book with amusing stories and dialogues depicting his points as well as puns and jokes. Just imagine Lewis Carroll mixed with a book on computer programming. He also devotes several chapters inventing special purpose programming languages and theorems for illustrative purposes.
The first time I read it, about 1981, I was was mesmerized by his intellectual tour de force. The second time, 2015, I saw clearly his bias in favor of a mechanistic understanding of human intelligence. If your interested in human and computer intelligence, programming, and philosophy, this should be your cup of tea.
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LibraryThing member jmattas
Fascinating! Full of all kinds of neat, interesting stuff, unbelievably inventive wordplay and structural experiments! I picked it up because of Gödel and logic and so on, but the book is more than that, more than just the names in its title. It does give an introduction to Gödel's theorems,
I just love it. I bought the 20th anniversary edition after the first read, it's a must for rereading.
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Bach's music and Escher's art, but the underlying theme is more general, related to abstract formal systems and their capabilities.I just love it. I bought the 20th anniversary edition after the first read, it's a must for rereading.
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LibraryThing member gswallreader
This book can have a profound impact on the way a person thinks. It so cleverly challenges ideas and exposes the reader in a very manageable way to various ideas. Though it is not "light reading," I really delighted in the experience of it, realizing what he was doing as I was reading. I
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wholeheartedly recommend this book! Show Less
Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — 1980)
Pulitzer Prize (Winner — General Non-Fiction — 1980)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — General Nonfiction — 1979)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1979
Physical description
XXX, 815 p.; 24 cm
ISBN
8777203100 / 9788777203107
Local notes
Omslag: Kjeld Brandt
Omslaget viser titel og en escher-tegning af fugle og fisk, der morfer over i hinanden - M. C. Escher: Luft og Vand
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Side 498: En Escher drage som jeg har som motiv på en T-shirt købt i Escher museet "Escher in het Paleis" i Den Haag.
Oversat fra amerikansk "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" af Henning Albrechtsen
Omslaget viser titel og en escher-tegning af fugle og fisk, der morfer over i hinanden - M. C. Escher: Luft og Vand
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Side 498: En Escher drage som jeg har som motiv på en T-shirt købt i Escher museet "Escher in het Paleis" i Den Haag.
Oversat fra amerikansk "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" af Henning Albrechtsen
Similar in this library
Pages
XXX; 815
DDC/MDS
| 510.1 |