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Book Cover for: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Paperback
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85%

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll

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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Basic Books
  • Publish Date: Feb 5th, 1999
  • Pages: 824
  • Language: English
  • Edition: Anniversary - 0020
  • Dimensions: 9.20in - 6.50in - 1.80in - 2.40lb
  • EAN: 9780465026562
  • Categories: • General• Logic• Machine Theory

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About the Author

Douglas R. Hofstadter is College of Arts and Sciences Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he also directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition. He is the author or co-author of nine books, including I Am a Strange Loop and Surfaces and Essences, and has contributed to ten more. He lives in Bloomington.

More books by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Book Cover for: I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas R. Hofstadter
Book Cover for: The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul, Douglas R. Hofstadter
Book Cover for: Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, Douglas R. Hofstadter
Book Cover for: Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, Douglas R. Hofstadter
Book Cover for: Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, Douglas R. Hofstadter
Book Cover for: Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language, Douglas R. Hofstadter

What people are saying

Mentioner image for: Joy Bhattacharjya
Joy Bhattacharjya
@joybhattacharj
2 years

Work in sport. Quiz. Read. Write. Try to think.

@PenguinIndia Godel Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter, totally changed my world view!

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Mentioner image for: Alex John Beck
Alex John Beck
@AlxJhnBck
2 years

Photographer in EU/USA with commercial background + dorky interests. So new to twitter I actually like it. @studio20NYU

@ziahaiderrahman Stylistically interesting: The Nocilla Trilogy - Agustin Mallo / lots of interesting formal things happening there. Godel Escher Bach - Douglas Hofstadter / meandering, dense, full of ideas, half memoir, half mile marker of human intellectual development Anything WG Sebald

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Mentioner image for: alt-classical Dove
alt-classical Dove
@DavidPa91620835
2 years

Lawful but Awful; Evangelical Christian; iNTj; BuSab Tyrant Petit; minarchist; American; Interests: physics, electronic engineering, & communications

@landryst @HardenKurtJ @rvisotski Pun from Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Hofstadter made a joke on Bach's Goldberg Variations that I refashioned (varied) into 'Berg's Very Gold Box'.

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Praise for this book

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction
Winner of the National Book Award in Science
"Every few decades an unknown author brings out a 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, Scientific American
"In some ways, Godel, Escher, Bach is an entire humanistic education between the covers of a single book. So, for my next visit to a desert island, give me sun, sand, water and GEB, and I'll live happily ever after."--John L. Casti, Nature
"A brilliant, creative, and very personal synthesis without precedent or peer in modern literature."--The American Mathematical Monthly
"I have never seen anything quite like this book. It has a youthful vitality and a wonderful brilliance, and I think that it may become something of a classic."--Jeremy Bernstein
"A huge, sprawling literary marvel, a philosophy book disguised as a book of entertainment disguised as a book of instruction."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"A triumph of cleverness, bravura performance."--Parabola
"A wondrous book that unites and explains, in a very entertaining way, many of the important ideas of recent intellectual history."--Commonweal
"Godel, Escher, Bach was a triumphantly successful presentation of quite difficult concepts for a popular audience. There has been nothing like it in computer science before or since."--Ernest Davis, IEEE Expert

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