Douglas R. Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979, Basic Books)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, also known as GEB, is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through short stories, illustrations, and analysis, the book discusses how systems can acquire meaningful context despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discusses self-reference and formal rules, isomorphism, what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and …
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, also known as GEB, is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through short stories, illustrations, and analysis, the book discusses how systems can acquire meaningful context despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discusses self-reference and formal rules, isomorphism, what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of "meaning" itself. In response to confusion over the book's theme, Hofstadter emphasized that Gödel, Escher, Bach is not about the relationships of mathematics, art, and music—but rather about how cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms. One point in the book presents an analogy about how individual neurons in the brain coordinate to create a unified sense of a coherent mind by comparing it to the social organization displayed in a colony of ants.Gödel, Escher, Bach won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and the National Book Award for Science Hardcover.
777 pages
English language
Published Nov. 5, 1979 by Basic Books.
Un approccio giornalistico alla spiegazione del celeberrimo teorema di Gödel, cercando (e spesso trovando) paralleli e incroci con la musica del maestro dei maestri (J. S. Bach) e l'arte di uno degli artisti del '900 dalle opere più enigmatiche. Richiede qualche nozione scientifica per poter essere digerito.
This is my all-time favorite book.
It feels like you are wandering in a place full of wonders and understanding many things that seemed unrelated, while enjoying the company of the author and his quirky creations.
Ich habe dieses gehypte Buch voller positiver Erwartung begonnen und bin bitter enttäuscht worden. Es ist unglaublich langweilig und für mich inhaltlich total irrelavant, abgesehen davon, das ich nix verstanden habe. Ist wohl nur etwas für Mathe-Nerds. Nach 100 Seiten habe ich aufgegeben.
