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Title: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter ISBN: 0-465-02656-7 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: January, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.53 (187 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Genius
Comment: This is one of the most deeply brilliant books ever written. Rarely do I meet someone who actually understood it -- it is only superficially about weaving together the seemingly disparate works of Godel, Escher and Bach. It is a masterwork on consciousness, a colossal intellectual argument that parallels the tersely worded wisdom of a zen koan, whose purpose is to hint at truths that are inaccessible to human logic. Hofstadter hints at these truths by probing the godelian limits to self-understanding, the "snake eating itself"-like recursivity of consciousness. Zen koan are meant to provoke enlightenment through the momentary extrication from godelian-limited logic. The excersize of climbing the ladder of Hofstadter's argument will give you the tools to use logic to point yourself in the same direction, of truths beyond the scope of logic.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting views, if you have (some) time (to waste)
Comment: This remains (although published over 25 years ago) a somehow uncomparable book that dwells extensively on the subject of various isomorphisms (structural similarities) and (the derived or inferred) meaning of such structural isomorphisms (or the meaning that one wishes to find in them).
The inferred isomorphic link between language and reality does typically provide some sort of a rather soft and often very subjective (hence rather blurred) link between between reality and how it is being perceived, one could hence speak of a rather soft isomorphism between language and reality... Other fine examples would include ethymological studies as a way of going back to a certain origin of how certain things have once been (and often remain) communicated amongst the vast society of human beings, so as to give certain insights on an (often lost and forgotten) original meaning of things and (now alas often commonplace) communications...
Anyway, having entered the subject of isomorphisms and their importance for the mind and a certain understanding thereof (the mind as a mirror of realities), the author (a computer programmer with a rather broad scientific and cultural background) will take you along various pathes in order to explore seemingly striking parallels between the biological, the scientifical, the musical, the graphic, the mathematical, the linguistic, the metaphorical and the cognitive worlds (please forgive me if I have unintentionally forgotten or added one). Some of these excursions are rather nice, but others are a bit more cumbersome and tedious, one of the autor's alltime favorites remaining the occurrence and analysis of so-called strange (recurrent, sometimes even self-reinforcing or self-reproducing) loops...
What the author also goes on to show is that there are some strange phenomena occurring in our scientific world (so-called paradoxes), showing the limited applicability and validity of our common mathematical and geometrical world views, which would either need a very long stretch of these models, or a total remodelling thereof... Different worlds are in need of different mathematic models and different (self-) reference systems (if there are rules, there must alas be a certain number of exceptions), but here it often appears, at least in my mind, that it is our own (biological) minds that are the setters of these often re-occurring limiting factors...
Although quite dense, and sometimes even quite ponderous for a quick read, the chapters are happily alleviated by a few sometimes almost comic dialogues between Achilles, Tortoise, Crab and other various fictive axiom-expounding characters (Zeno etc.)
Even though already a bit (scientifically) outdated since its first inception (and hence also probably also somehow out of fashion in its almost mystic multidisciplinary approach), not modified own iota in its many subsequent editions since 1979, it can nevertheless be quite funny to poke in this book once in a while.
Rating: 4
Summary: Remember: We're in Planesville
Comment: I give this book high marks. The read is difficult, I concede. However, remember that in order to make progress, oftentimes we must take a leap of faith. The book even argues that proving something to be true requires you to "just believe" because logic eventually runs out upon deconstruction. See chapter VII.
I have had similar trouble that others report. I have had to re-read parts to make sure I get his points, whether I agree or not. And yes, he conveys his ideas in what some may consider an offhand way. There is much value in the saying, "To be great is to be misunderstood."
You dont have to like this book. Just make sure you're certain why you do or don't like it. Is it because the Hof doesn't know what he is talking about, or because he "wastes" your time with his lingo and fictional prancing about? Or is it because there's a chance that you don't understand? I am not condescending readers who don't like GEB, but we too often rate someone's ideas based on our inability to understand and yes, sometimes be entertained immediately. Don't expect him to do all the work. What are you bringin' to the party?
This book is challenging. Once you have spent enough time with it, you might see that it requires you to challenge your understanding of things, take that leap of faith (it's not all about logic), suspend judgment, then see what you think when you get to the other side. Consider the section devoted to the topic of Euclidean vs. non-Euclidean geometry:
Euclid of Alexandria perfected the art of rigor in his Elements, becoming arguably the most influential mathematician in times of antiquity. He made a most convincing case for the accuracy and truthfulness of much of the fundamental geometry we know today. He did so by using five principals upon which to base the remainder of his volumes of assertion. Four of the five principles were based on truths quite simple and so understandable, for the most part we hold them to be self-evident. One of those (the first) was the notion of a straight line, as simple and direct as connecting point A to point B.
His work seemed universal, truthful, and beyond reproach, especially considering the painstaking efforts he went to prove the seemingly most basic of concepts. This all seemed well and good, until others, implicitly or otherwise, began to question the notion or suggest what a different version of what a straight line is. In other words: What if there was more than one type of straight line? How could this be?
To make a long story only slightly longer, we find that there in fact IS more than one type of straight line (what's the difference between a straight line drawn on a piece of paper and a straight line drawn on a basketball? hmmmm....), which spawned elliptical and spherical geometries. Turns out that Euclidean geometry is actually a subset of geometry, not the entire geometry. All these years we thought that a piece of the pie was the whole pie.
The point here is that you must endeavor to see outside what you know to be true. It's not always comfortable or seemingly conceivable, but we must accept a degree of uncertainty before we can realize a new level of certainty.
Give the book a shot. Maybe two. Suspend your judgment and take the hit. You'll see. Regards.
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Title: Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern by Douglas R. Hofstadter ISBN: 0465045669 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: March, 1996 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Mind's I : Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul by Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel C. Dennett ISBN: 0553345842 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 April, 1985 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Godel's Proof by Ernest Nagel, James Roy Newman, Douglas R. Hofstadter ISBN: 0814758169 Publisher: New York University Press Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: SOCIETY OF MIND by Marvin Minsky ISBN: 0671657135 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 15 March, 1988 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought by Douglas R. Hofstadter ISBN: 0465024750 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: March, 1996 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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