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Books : Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (20th anniversary edition with a new preface by the author) .
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Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (20th anniversary edition with a new preface by the author) by: Douglas R. Hofstadter List Price: £18.99 Healthy Living Books Price: £11.99 You Save: £7.00 (37%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 153 EAN: 9780140289206 ISBN: 0140289208 Label: Penguin Books Ltd Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd Number Of Pages: 824 Publication Date: March 30, 2000 Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd Studio: Penguin Books Ltd Sales Rank: 1042 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review: Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is still something of a marvel. Besides being a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity, this book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Gödel. It also looks at the prospects for computers and artificial intelligence (AI) for mimicking human thought. For the general reader and the computer techie alike, this book still sets a standard for thinking about the future of computers and their relation to the way we think. Hofstadter's great achievement in Gödel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (such as undecidability, recursion, and "strange loops") accessible and remarkably entertaining. Borrowing a page from Lewis Carroll (who might well have been a fan of this book), each chapter presents dialogue between the Tortoise and Achilles, as well as other characters who dramatise concepts discussed later in more detail. Allusions to Bach's music (centring on his Musical Offering) and Escher's continually paradoxical artwork are plentiful here. This more approachable material lets the author delve into serious number theory (concentrating on the ramifications of Gödel's Theorem of Incompleteness) while stopping along the way to ponder the work of a host of other mathematicians, artists, and thinkers. The world has moved on since 1979, of course. The book predicted that computers probably won't ever beat humans in chess, though Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. And the vinyl record, which serves for some of Hofstadter's best analogies, is now left to collectors. Sections on recursion and the graphs of certain functions from physics look tantalising, like the fractals of recent chaos theory. And AI has moved on, of course, with mixed results. Yet Gödel, Escher, Bach remains a remarkable achievement. Its intellectual range and ability to let us visualise difficult mathematical concepts help make it one of this century's best for anyone who's interested in computers and their potential for real intelligence. --Richard Dragan Average Rating:
 Rating:  - This will make you thinkLike no other book I've read before, Godel, Escher, Bach really made me think. An incredibly clever author, dealing with hard to explain issues (- consciousness and identity primarily), Hofstadter still manages to keep the reader interested and entertained (mostly) throughout. Having said that, it's not an easy read or a relaxing read- I felt like I'd been put through a gruelling mental workout after most chapters. But... no pain, no gain I suppose, as the rewards are well worth it in the end. Rating: - Engaging and mind bendingEven though it is old, it still holds all its qualities intact. To me it is the bible of everything that begins with "meta". It hovers elegantly around so many subjects and still ties them together into self-reference and I doubt anyone can help but be charmed. The challenges are put forward in such a playful manner that only the crankiest stick in the stickiest mud could not help but swaying their way. But be warned - it does take an effort - and all other books will feel both easy, shallow and... ... Read More: Rating: - A great intro to some profound mathematicsI read this when it was published back in '79 and it helped inspire me to more fully understand the massive achievments of Kurt Godel and his quite astonishing incompletness theorem. For the casual reader, this is a wonderful book that will inspire you and give you a glimpse into the unsettling world of axiomatic set theory and it's uncany relationship to the music of Bach and the artistry of Esher. Rating: - Do buy this edition! A wonderful book well worth reading. I feel obliged to note that contrary to a previous review the book supplied to me had not lost '...the aesthetic appeal the previous editions had'. In fact the paper quality was not '...really bad' but rather good and the pages were certainly not '...almost transparent'. The book's size is very similar to a previous edition I have encountered and the margins are not smaller than they should be. I really cannot find fault with this edition of the book ... Read More: Rating:  - It is big and it is cleverThis enormous book is a hymn to the "strange loop", a term coined by the author. Loosely, a strange loop occurs when, after moving up a level in a conceptual hierachy, one is brought strangely back to where one started. It's closely related to those paradoxes of self-reference which can occur when form and content become intertwined. An example is the old joke about the park keeper angry that his park has been littered with leaflets entitled "Keep Britain Tidy". Another is building one computer ... Read More: |
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