Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid [B0074-20]

1999 PB 20th anniversary reprint of the 1979 original with a new preface by the author, clean with some cover wear. A classic metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the manner of Lewis Carroll. Everything is a symbol, and symbols can combine to form patterns. Patterns are beautiful and revelatory of larger truths. These are the central ideas in the thinking of Kurt Gödel, M.C. Escher, and Johann Sebastian Bach, perhaps the three greatest minds of the past quarter-millennium. In a stunning work of humanism, Hofstadter ties together the work of mathematician Gödel, graphic artist Escher, and composer Bach. Gödel, Escher, Bach, a Pulitzer prize-winning treatise on genius, explores the workings of brilliant people's brains with the help of historical examples and brainteaser puzzles. Not for the dim or the lazy, this book shows you, more clearly than most any other, what it means to see symbols and patterns where others see only the universe. Touching on math, computers, literature, music, and artificial intelligence, Gödel, Escher, Bach is a challenging and potentially life-changing piece of writing.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "A mathematical, philosophical, and musical epic that will make your brain sing."; "The weirdest and most wonderful textbook I've ever read. It taught me formal logic much better than the course at my uni, and really captured the spirit of wonder and playfulness that's at the very heart of mathematics. Certain chapters about biology and AI are outdated by now, but the vast majority of the book holds up very well even 45 years after publication."; "This one was a lot, I can't say I fully grasped or appreciated everything but I still enjoyed reading it and feel like I learned a decent amount about the 3 titular subjects and a variety of other concepts."; "An excellent book, full of interesting and puzzling, punning philosophical chapters. This book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Godel. It is like Lewis Carroll intersects with these great philosophers. I particularly enjoyed the stories of 'What the Tortoise Said to Achilles' and 'Djinn and Tonic'."