Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid | 
 enlarge | Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy Used: $4.91
You Save: $18.04 (79%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  243 reviews
Sales Rank: 1900
Media: Paperback
Edition: 20 Anv
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 832
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0465026567
Dewey Decimal Number: 510.1
EAN: 9780465026562
ASIN: 0465026567
Publication Date: February 4, 1999
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Condition: Soft cover that has light overall wear to book, Otherwise this is a nice copy with no marks anywhere on book. Fast shipping.
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Amazon.com Review
Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is still something of a marvel. Besides being a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity, this book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Goedel. It also looks at the prospects for computers and artificial intelligence (AI) for mimicking human thought. For the general reader and the computer techie alike, this book still sets a standard for thinking about the future of computers and their relation to the way we think. Hofstadter's great achievement in Goedel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (like undecidability, recursion, and 'strange loops') accessible and remarkably entertaining. Borrowing a page from Lewis Carroll (who might well have been a fan of this book), each chapter presents dialogue between the Tortoise and Achilles, as well as other characters who dramatize concepts discussed later in more detail. Allusions to Bach's music (centering on his Musical Offering) and Escher's continually paradoxical artwork are plentiful here. This more approachable material lets the author delve into serious number theory (concentrating on the ramifications of Goedel's Theorem of Incompleteness) while stopping along the way to ponder the work of a host of other mathematicians, artists, and thinkers. The world has moved on since 1979, of course. The book predicted that computers probably won't ever beat humans in chess, though Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. And the vinyl record, which serves for some of Hofstadter's best analogies, is now left to collectors. Sections on recursion and the graphs of certain functions from physics look tantalizing, like the fractals of recent chaos theory. And AI has moved on, of course, with mixed results. Yet Goedel, Escher, Bach remains a remarkable achievement. Its intellectual range and ability to let us visualize difficult mathematical concepts help make it one of this century's best for anyone who's interested in computers and their potential for real intelligence. --Richard Dragan Topics Covered: J.S. Bach, M.C. Escher, Kurt Goedel: biographical information and work, artificial intelligence (AI) history and theories, strange loops and tangled hierarchies, formal and informal systems, number theory, form in mathematics, figure and ground, consistency, completeness, Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, recursive structures, theories of meaning, propositional calculus, typographical number theory, Zen and mathematics, levels of description and computers; theory of mind: neurons, minds and thoughts; undecidability; self-reference and self-representation; Turing test for machine intelligence.
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. Goedel Escher and Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 238 more reviews...
 Computer Science September 26, 2008
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 meanings around him or her objectively.
An Incredible Intellectual Romp August 27, 2008
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 whole it is as relevant and exciting today as it was when it was first published.
Literate, Facinating, Readable August 12, 2008
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.
My favourite book - ever! June 9, 2008
This is one of my favourite book of all time. I first read it twenty years ago as an undergraduate on my computer science degree. The nice thing about getting older, but still remaining young, is that you can go back and revistit master works - and lets make no bones about it, this is a master work. As such, it requires time, effort and mastery of the ideas.
This is not a book that you can just pick up and read in a couple of days. Of course you can delve into it and loose yourself for a few hours, but to obtain mastery will take serious time and effort. Using Howard Gardener's terminology, Hofstadter synthesises across the domains of music, maths and art. This is no mean feat.
Buy it, only if you have the time for it. Treasure it, enjot it and love it as much as I do.
 Abstruse and over-rated April 20, 2008
8 out of 24 found this review helpful
The author complains in the new preface that a vast majority of the reviewers, including those who have rated this book very highly, seem to have no idea of what he has been trying to say. In my opinion, this is a self-indictment that does not leave much for others to say. If the author cannot get his ideas across in 700 pages, perhaps people should not waste their time on him. I have learnt it the hard way: after buying this book, five years ago, on high recommendations of friends, only to find it so boring and confused that I could never go beyond a few pages even though I gave it innumerable attempts.
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