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bufally47 's review for:
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
by Douglas R. Hofstadter
This behemoth is essentially about paradox in the spheres of mathematics and art. Even the consideration of whether or not to read GEB is ridden with paradox. 1) You probably need to have some skeletal knowledge of number theory as a prerequisite, but math majors would probably be annoyed. 2) In order to fully appreciate GEB you'd need to feel cohesion between chapters and in order to get this big-picture connectedness you'd probably have to finish the book in less than 2 months – but tackling it in such a time frame would be a chore and strip away the fun, thus minimizing appreciation.
Still, my year-and-a-half journey definitely had its delights. The author has both a childlike wonder and firm intellectual grasp on the material, and both are apparent. The dialogues are super witty and jam-packed with connections to other parts of the book. Hofstadter gets you to play around with formal systems, marvel at the human brain, contemplate the concept of infinity. His own fascination with the topics is contagious.
The downside is the frustration. I struggled most with Bloop/Gloop/Floop and then it turns out they were barely even integral to the thesis, or anything really. After wading through Gödel's Theorem (which was somehow both fun and grueling) I felt the whole AI / brain mystery thing was kind of anti-climactic. Which is a shame. Both are deeply interesting concepts, but the tenuous connection between them is only made at the very end.
If you have some time on your hands for a project and these sound like concepts you'd enjoy pondering, GEB would probably be worthwhile.
Still, my year-and-a-half journey definitely had its delights. The author has both a childlike wonder and firm intellectual grasp on the material, and both are apparent. The dialogues are super witty and jam-packed with connections to other parts of the book. Hofstadter gets you to play around with formal systems, marvel at the human brain, contemplate the concept of infinity. His own fascination with the topics is contagious.
The downside is the frustration. I struggled most with Bloop/Gloop/Floop and then it turns out they were barely even integral to the thesis, or anything really. After wading through Gödel's Theorem (which was somehow both fun and grueling) I felt the whole AI / brain mystery thing was kind of anti-climactic. Which is a shame. Both are deeply interesting concepts, but the tenuous connection between them is only made at the very end.
If you have some time on your hands for a project and these sound like concepts you'd enjoy pondering, GEB would probably be worthwhile.