777 pages
English language
Published Nov. 3, 1979 by Vintage Books.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, also known as GEB, is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through short stories, illustrations, and analysis, the book discusses how systems can acquire meaningful context despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discusses self-reference and formal rules, isomorphism, what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of "meaning" itself. In response to confusion over the book's theme, Hofstadter emphasized that Gödel, Escher, Bach is not about the relationships of mathematics, art, and music—but rather about how cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms. One point in the book presents an analogy about how individual …
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, also known as GEB, is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through short stories, illustrations, and analysis, the book discusses how systems can acquire meaningful context despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discusses self-reference and formal rules, isomorphism, what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of "meaning" itself. In response to confusion over the book's theme, Hofstadter emphasized that Gödel, Escher, Bach is not about the relationships of mathematics, art, and music—but rather about how cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms. One point in the book presents an analogy about how individual neurons in the brain coordinate to create a unified sense of a coherent mind by comparing it to the social organization displayed in a colony of ants.Gödel, Escher, Bach won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and the National Book Award for Science Hardcover.
Ich habe dieses gehypte Buch voller positiver Erwartung begonnen und bin bitter enttäuscht worden. Es ist unglaublich langweilig und für mich inhaltlich total irrelavant, abgesehen davon, das ich nix verstanden habe. Ist wohl nur etwas für Mathe-Nerds. Nach 100 Seiten habe ich aufgegeben.
Les personnes dépourvues d’un (gros) minimum d’esprit logique et mathématique et/ou de curiosité intellectuelle peuvent passer leur chemin. Les autres découvriront quelques-uns des principes fondamentaux qui gouvernent le monde, de l’abstraction aride des systèmes formels à l’ADN et à l’intelligence artificielle, de Bach le compositeur à Escher le dessinateur et à Gödel le logicien, tous liés d’une manière assez inattendue.
Version longue : www.coindeweb.net/blogsanssujetprecis/index.php?post/2008/04/16/487-godel-escher-bach-de-douglas-hofstadter
It took me over a year to read this the first time through, and it'll probably take me that long to read it again...
After reading book:[I Am a Strange Loop], I'm going to put this back on the shelf.
