Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 510.1
EAN: 9780465026852
ISBN: 0465026850
Label: Basic Books
Manufacturer: Basic Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 776
Publication Date: May 31, 1979
Publisher: Basic Books
Sales Rank: 353449
Studio: Basic Books
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Editorial Review:
Product 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 and Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.
Amazon.com Review:
Everything is a symbol, and symbols can combine to formpatterns. Patterns are beautiful and revelatory of largertruths. These are the central ideas in the thinking of KurtGödel, M.C. Escher, and Johann Sebastian Bach, perhapsthe three greatest minds of the past quarter-millennium. In a stunningwork of humanism, Hofstadter ties together the work of mathematicianGödel, graphic artist Escher, and composer Bach.
Gödel, Escher, Bach, a Pulitzer prize-winningtreatise on genius, explores the workings of brilliant people's brainswith the help of historical examples and brainteaser puzzles. Not forthe dim or the lazy, this book shows you, more clearly than most anyother, what it means to see symbols and patterns where others see onlythe universe. Touching on math, computers, literature, music, andartificial intelligence, Gödel, Escher, Bach is achallenging and potentially life-changing piece of writing.
Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Wrong Language
The book was fine, I guess. Except it was in Spanish instead of English. I'd like to return it and get the English version.
Rating:  - Not my kind of philosophy
This book is boring. It doesn't really tell you anything, kind of "all form, no substance". A cloud of a book.
I approached it a few times in the past, seeing it on top of many bestseller charts, but each time got scared away by apparent lack of clarity - when you open this book at random, you always face something unexpected - math, music, art, insects, human brains, DNA, viruses, zen, artificial intelligence, talking turtles, you name it, and always in different form.
Anyway, ... Read More
Rating:  - Computer Science
Godel, Escher and Bach, written by Douglas Hofstadter, while the title would suggest it is discussion of a mathematician, an artist, and a composer, is a complex examination of how human beings develop perception and meaning. More specifically, the book explores, through a series of dialogues and narrations, how symbols, thought and language are all intertwined and how reality is essentially a composition of overlapping meanings and perceptions. The book challenges the reader to observe the system of symbolic ... Read More
Rating: - An Incredible Intellectual Romp
Early this summer at a computer programming conference I found myself with a group of programmers of different ages and nationalities. The one thing we all had in common is that we'd read this book while in high school or college and found it fascinating. For some of us the book was life changing. Most of us rediscovered a love of math that our high school education had nearly destroyed. Many of us became programmers because of it. The book may seem to be dated in some respects after 20 plus years, but on the ... Read More
Rating: - Literate, Facinating, Readable
This is a work of incredible depth and scope.From number theory to cognition to genetics, Hofstadter offers some incredible insights about the way we and the world work.One word of advice: don't worry if you can't understand all of his ideas.This book is so chock-full of content that most readers could spend a decade plowing through it, only to find that they've missed something important.Just read it.You'll get some of it, and that's enough.
Godel, Escher, Bach |
