About the book
Cognitive scientist Douglas R. Hofstadter draws on the composer Bach, the artist Escher and the logician Gödel to show how meaning can arise from meaningless parts. Hofstadter has said the real subject is how a coherent mind emerges from individual neurons. Chapters alternate with dialogues, usually between Achilles and the Tortoise, characters borrowed from Zeno and Lewis Carroll, full of puns, puzzles and musical forms such as a crab canon. He covers recursion, isomorphism, self-reference and formal systems, coins the term strange loop, and invents two small programming languages, BlooP and FlooP. Its honors include a National Book Award in science and the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
Mark Manson called it one of the most dizzying and fascinating books he has read, a study of how paradoxes can account for consciousness, and Seth Godin urged readers to pick it up after learning that two smart friends had not.
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This book has 3 recommendations
Seth Godin (Author & Entrepreneur)
In the last week, I discovered that at least two of my smart friends hadn't read Godel, Escher, Bach. They have now. You should too.
Cory Zue (Software Developer & Entrepreneur)
More recently books like Godel, Escher, Bach and Sapiens have influenced my thinking a lot.
Mark Manson (Author)
Perhaps the most dizzyingly brilliant, fascinating and interesting books I’ve ever read. The book is about paradoxes and how they can explain consciousness. But to understand his thesis, Hofstadter takes you on an unforgettable journey to get there.
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Often recommended alongside
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (2 shared recommenders)