Gödel, Escher, Bach

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll Douglas Hofstadter's 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. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

Douglas R. Hofstadter is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of Metamagical Themas; Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies; Le Ton beau de Marot; I Am a Strange Loop; “Translator, Trader”; and most recently, Ambigrammia: Between Creation and Discovery.  He translated Alexander Pushkin’s novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin from Russian verse into English verse, and has also translated books from several other languages into English.