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Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (20th anniversary edition with a new preface by the author)
 
 
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Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (20th anniversary edition with a new preface by the author) (Paperback)

by Douglas R Hofstadter (Author) "Frederick was an admirer not only of pianos, but also of an organist and composer by the name of J. S. Bach ..." (more)
4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R Hofstadter's Gödel, 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 Gödel. 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 Gödel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (such as 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 dramatise concepts discussed later in more detail. Allusions to Bach's music (centring 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 Gödel'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 tantalising, like the fractals of recent chaos theory. And AI has moved on, of course, with mixed results. Yet Gödel, Escher, Bach remains a remarkable achievement. Its intellectual range and ability to let us visualise 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

Product Description
'What is a self, and how can a self come out of inaminate matter?' This is the riddle that drove Hofstadter to write this extraordinary book. Linking together the music of J.S. Bach, the graphic art of Escher and the mathematical theorems of Godel, as well as ideas drawn from logic, biology, psychology, physics and linguistics, Douglas Hofstadter illuminates one of the greatest mysteries of modern science: the nature of human thought processes. 'Every few decades an unknown author brings outa 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

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Frederick was an admirer not only of pianos, but also of an organist and composer by the name of J. S. Bach. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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4.4 out of 5 stars (22 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars It is big and it is clever, 7 May 2007
By muddy-funster (Kent, England) - See all my reviews
This enormous book is a hymn to the "strange loop", a term coined by the author. Loosely, a strange loop occurs when, after moving up a level in a conceptual hierachy, one is brought strangely back to where one started. It's closely related to those paradoxes of self-reference which can occur when form and content become intertwined.

An example is the old joke about the park keeper angry that his park has been littered with leaflets entitled "Keep Britain Tidy". Another is building one computer system to test another computer system, and then needing a third system to test the one you've just built. Yet another is the Wikipedia entry of Douglas Hofstadter which, at the time of writing, contains a quote from Hofstadter stating that his Wikipedia entry is full of inaccuracies. (So, do you trust the entry enough to believe this quote claiming it's unreliable?) You get the idea.

Hofstadter sees these strange loops everywhere: in the music of Bach, the art of Escher and, most significantly, Gödel's incompleteness theorem, in which an algebraic system is used to prove a result about itself (rather than about numbers). After he's presented the various variations on these ideas, he then moves on to Artificial Intelligence, examining the "state of the art" as he sees it and discussing the implications of the earlier material for this subject.

Along the way he delves into various other diverse subjects such as the structure of the human brain or the challenges of translating a novel into different (human) languages. Much of this is fascinating stuff and if you are mathematically inclined, there is plenty to love about this book.

Given all the above, why not give the man 5 stars - what more could one possibly ask for?! Well, personally I have a number of objections to this work which I'll mention briefly before the crowd throws rotten fruit at me. Firstly, I am not sure that *all* Hofstadter's examples are on the ball. For example, the loop in Bach's "endlessly rising" canon is simply a consequence of there being 12 semitones in an octave, rather than any subtle paradox of self-reference. Similarly, the main theme from Bach's Musical Offering is not "Babbage" backwards, however you push it! In short, I suspect the author's obsessions can cause him to see patterns in the world around him which aren't really there.

Secondly, his would-be humorous writing style, quirky and lively though it is, will not be to everyone's taste ("Why, you don't say, Mr T!"). Thirdly, some readers will wish he had been more honest up-front about the book really being about AI (and something of a polemic, as evidenced by his almost mean-spirited attack on the philosopher John Lucas in several places): personally, it's not a subject close to my heart and I would have been rather more interested in delving into, say, what makes Bach's music beautiful and spiritual, as the cover suggests we will be doing. And fourthly, and most seriously, I am not convinced that Hofstadter is that great a pedagogue: the facetious style and inordinate length of the book can serve to obscure, rather than illuminate, his meaning.

These niggles notwithstanding, this book really is a fine achievement and, if you have the time and inclination (you'll need both in spades), likely to be a very rewarding read.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, brilliant, flowing...quite good, really, 28 Jun 2000
This is a brilliant book. Back when I was in school, I used to borrow this book from the library during summer vacation, read it throughout the summer and return it in the autumn. For every year, I understood more and more :-) Mind, I was around 15-16 years old, so this was all new and exciting stuff. Now, several years later, I find that bits and pieces crop up in ordinary discussions - recursion, DNA/RNA mechanisms, fractals on a musical level, Zen philosophy,Number theory, AI and mind discussions - that I have long since gotten a sort-of grasp of, due to this book. This is also the book that led me to read "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" (another necessary book). Nowadays, 10 years later, I keep two copies of GEB on my shelf, one in english and one in swedish. Everybody need at least one...but you won't get mine!

I guess I should comment on the way tha hofstadter manages to mae the most complicated subjects understandable, how he manages to find links and analogies in very interesting places, how one can read the book again and again and still find new things to ponder...But I won't. You need this book. Your brain need this book. If you haven't read it yet, Do.

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126 of 142 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars WARNING: Do not buy this edition! Go for a previous one!, 20 Dec 2001
By A Customer
Don't buy *this* edition of this wonderful book.
The paper quality is really bad (the paper is very thin, almost transparent), the whole book has shrunk in size, the text looks really cramped, the margins are smaller than they should be (I guess to save paper!) and to cut a long story short the aesthetic appeal the previous editions had is completely lost.
My recommendation: Try to find a copy of one of the previous editions if possible, and buy this edition if an only if you fail!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantastically in-depth, whilst still light enough to enjoy reading if you don't understand it all!
I have to admit that this book was sitting on my bookshelf for a while before I started reading it. In fact, I think it was about three years (I hadn't heard of the book's... Read more
Published 9 months ago by T. Gregory

5.0 out of 5 stars This will make you think
Like no other book I've read before, Godel, Escher, Bach really made me think. An incredibly clever author, dealing with hard to explain issues (- consciousness and identity... Read more
Published 10 months ago by BillyM

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging and mind bending
Even though it is old, it still holds all its qualities intact. To me it is the bible of everything that begins with "meta". Read more
Published 18 months ago by Theis Egeberg

5.0 out of 5 stars A great intro to some profound mathematics
I read this when it was published back in '79 and it helped inspire me to more fully understand the massive achievments of Kurt Godel and his quite astonishing incompletness... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Matthew Ives

5.0 out of 5 stars Do buy this edition!
A wonderful book well worth reading.

I feel obliged to note that, contrary to a previous review, the book supplied to me had not lost '... Read more
Published on 19 Jun 2007 by Mr. G. Sexton

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!
Scientists seem to love quoting Alice in wonderland, as it seems applicable in so many fields. This book is a grown up version of Alice, an invaluable reference for anyone... Read more
Published on 18 Jan 2005

5.0 out of 5 stars Godel, Escher, Bach - expanding the mind
There is some really serious mathematics at one point in this book. I read that chapter 10 times and made myself believe that I understood it. Read more
Published on 21 Feb 2004 by Clifford Matthews

5.0 out of 5 stars Eternal Golden Braid - Finally, Truth in Advertising!
Science and art have never been less accessible. They have become obscure private languages, requiring rites of initiation and proficiency in coding and decoding. Read more
Published on 24 Nov 2003 by Sam Vaknin

4.0 out of 5 stars What a whopper!
There is no doubt that this book is wonderful.
In attempting to explain consciousness and the sense of identity as natural processes, explained by some advanced mathematics,... Read more
Published on 25 Feb 2003 by Norberto Amaral

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing
Just an amazing book. It makes you fly high. It takes to level of thoughts you might have never experienced. Read more
Published on 9 Dec 2001 by Santus Enrico Carlo

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