Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

• Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Basic Books, 1999
• Paperback, 777 pages
• ISBN: 9780465026562

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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.

Godel, Escher, Bach is a Pulitzer Prize–winning treatise exploring patterns and symbols in the thinking of mathematician Kurt Godel, artist M. C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach. A groundbreaking book that has set the standard for interdisciplinary writing. A book every thinking reader must have.

Douglas R. Hofstadter is College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. His previous books are the Pulitzer Prizewinning Gödel, Escher, Bach; Metamagical Themas, The Mind’s I, Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, Le Ton Beau de Marot, and Eugene Onegin.