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ricksilva 's review for:
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
by Douglas R. Hofstadter
This book was very popular with my friends when I was in college, so popular, in fact, that I balked at it as being something trendy and never got around to reading it. Until now. I love this book. And I'm glad I waited to read it.
GEB is a difficult book to describe. The three central figures, a mathematician, an artist, and a composer, don't seem to share much on the surface aside from their obvious brilliance in their respective fields.
Hofstadter brings the work of the three together in a lengthy examination of the nature of thought and intelligence. Along the way, he touches on symbolic logic, number theory, music, visual art, molecular biology, Zen, computer science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.
He does it all while interspersing his chapters with humorous dialogues using the style and characters of Zeno and Lewis Carroll, and formatting inspired by Bach's compositions.
Going into this book, I had almost no knowledge of classical music. I'm okay with math, and have a pretty reasonable grasp of molecular biology (I teach high school biology and chemistry). I'm a fan of Escher's work, although I don't have much theoretical knowledge about visual art.
I found myself referencing many, many books I'd read and ideas I'd encountered over my lifetime as I made my way through GEB, which I why I was glad to be reading it now, rather than when I was 18. There is a LOT to ponder in this book.
And throughout it all, Hofstadter engages in some amazing wordplay, adding new layers to the text in an incredible variety of ways.
This book definitely asks a lot of the reader. It's dense in places, and it jumps rapidly to so many wildly different ideas that it can feel like a scramble to keep up.
But it is absolutely loaded with brilliance. A fascinating read.
GEB is a difficult book to describe. The three central figures, a mathematician, an artist, and a composer, don't seem to share much on the surface aside from their obvious brilliance in their respective fields.
Hofstadter brings the work of the three together in a lengthy examination of the nature of thought and intelligence. Along the way, he touches on symbolic logic, number theory, music, visual art, molecular biology, Zen, computer science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.
He does it all while interspersing his chapters with humorous dialogues using the style and characters of Zeno and Lewis Carroll, and formatting inspired by Bach's compositions.
Going into this book, I had almost no knowledge of classical music. I'm okay with math, and have a pretty reasonable grasp of molecular biology (I teach high school biology and chemistry). I'm a fan of Escher's work, although I don't have much theoretical knowledge about visual art.
I found myself referencing many, many books I'd read and ideas I'd encountered over my lifetime as I made my way through GEB, which I why I was glad to be reading it now, rather than when I was 18. There is a LOT to ponder in this book.
And throughout it all, Hofstadter engages in some amazing wordplay, adding new layers to the text in an incredible variety of ways.
This book definitely asks a lot of the reader. It's dense in places, and it jumps rapidly to so many wildly different ideas that it can feel like a scramble to keep up.
But it is absolutely loaded with brilliance. A fascinating read.