Godel, Escher, Bach

G(del, Escher, Bach is a Pulitzer Prizewinning treatise exploring patterns and symbols in the thinking of mathematician Kurt G(del, artist M. C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach. A groundbreaking book that has set the standard for interdisciplinary writing. A book every thinking reader must have.. Douglas Hofstadters book is concerned directly with the nature of maps or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gdel Escher and Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

Author Biography

Douglas R. Hofstadter is College of Arts and Sciences Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he also directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition. He is the author or co-author of nine books, including I Am a Strange Loop and Surfaces and Essences, and has contributed to ten more. He lives in Bloomington.