Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.32 AVERAGE
4.32 AVERAGE
My all-time favorite book, which will change the way you look at the world. The book covers an immense range of topics, all connected in creative ways. Mathematics, logic, computer science, artificial intelligence, language, translation, philosophy, biology, physics, puzzles, art, literature, music, history—if you're a curious person, there's something here for you. The writing was clear; the dialogues, witty. Gödel Escher Bach is a profound look at the mind emerges from mindless neurons and how meaning emerges from meaningless stuff. I've never read anything like it and probably never will again.
Towards the end, as the book explores concepts from AI, I lost a bit of interest because I had doubts about whether it's out-dated. AI has progressed greatly since this book was written.
But the first half, leading up to the explanation of Godel's theorem, I found fascinating.
But the first half, leading up to the explanation of Godel's theorem, I found fascinating.
Where to even start? Well I guess first off, this is one of the few books I think was written by someone who is really on my intellectual level. I want to meet Hofstadter so bad because it seems like we think alike in a lot of ways.
I can't even really describe what this book is about. Yes, the three titular personalities but also AI, molecular biology, number theory, linguistics, puns... there is no end to the gems contained inside this tome.
I am not going to pretend I absorbed everything in here. The parts that were more in line with my personal interests I read through quickly and attentively, while some parts were a bit sluggish. It will definitely benefit from a re-read.
Also, read the bibliography. Read it.
I guess if I had one complaint, it would be not that the book is a bit out-of-date, but that the bibliography hasn't been updated. I'm planning on reading many of the books from the bibliography to my "to-rad" list, but I wish there was a list of more modern books with similar subject matter.
I can't even really describe what this book is about. Yes, the three titular personalities but also AI, molecular biology, number theory, linguistics, puns... there is no end to the gems contained inside this tome.
I am not going to pretend I absorbed everything in here. The parts that were more in line with my personal interests I read through quickly and attentively, while some parts were a bit sluggish. It will definitely benefit from a re-read.
Also, read the bibliography. Read it.
I guess if I had one complaint, it would be not that the book is a bit out-of-date, but that the bibliography hasn't been updated. I'm planning on reading many of the books from the bibliography to my "to-rad" list, but I wish there was a list of more modern books with similar subject matter.
Thanks Doug, I am now convinced that mathematics is self aware.
There's a pretty short list of books that I've read that have seriously changed me, but from the first chapter I knew this was going to be one of those. I am a generalist by inclination, I've always found my understanding of a subject enriched by understanding of unrelated subjects. Hofstadter is a generalist par excellence, having succeeded in writing a book about seemingly everything in a coherent, humorous way. It was a challenging read, I'm used to being able to skim non-fiction, but this was pretty thoroughly unskimmable. I'm especially impressed at the way he explores meta- as a concept, trating it not only as a fun avant garde cultural trope (ala stoppard, grant morrison, and robert anton wilson to name a few), but as a serious way of understanding the human experience.
I only made 10% of the way into it before I was forced to exit by a near fatal case of ennui. A significant part of the problem was in style. Hofstadter tries to apply the storytelling logic of "show don't tell" to non fiction, where in all honesty it does not belong. In particular, if you are going to do this, don't do long step wise exposition without positioning what you are doing. The dialogues were silly and left me cold, the extensive forays into made up number systems were time wasting, and the rest was low in content. I'm guessing from what I've read from other reviews that this could have made a decent 300 page book, but it's dreadful at 800.
challenging
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
Others on this site have praised this book more eloquently than I can, so let me just say this; Hofstadter is that most rare and precious of teachers - the one who truly, madly, deeply loves his subject, and can communicate that enthusiasm. In that it can continue to be recommended and loaned and borrowed, this book is nearly an infinitely extensible treasure.
slow-paced
It tries really hard to be clever but that didn’t quite gel with me. The math was interesting, but lost me on the philosophical tangents.
Well, it's a real tome. It's about the best explanation of Goedel's incompleteness theorem and its implications there is, but it also introduces you to so much more. Took me about 5 months to get through it, but well worth it - even though the last chapter got a little silly in places (and he was wrong about chess).