Godel, Escher, Bach

Anyone read "Godel, Escher, Bach; an eternal golden braid" by Douglas Hofstadter? I've just picked it up and have only broken into the first 20 pages so far, but i'm completely blown away! The ideas are fantastic and although it's rather on the 'intellectual side', i'm completely fascinated with the idea of 'strange loops' and patterns throughout existence. Apparantly it won the Pulitzer prize back in the '70's and an older friend of mine said that it used to be required reading back when he was in school.
I first became interested in the idea of 'thought loops' due to extended experimental psychedelic use coupled with my interest in Zen Buddhism, great tools for thinking, but i eventually came to a brick wall with them... a 'loop of perception', if you will. Kind of like when you're trying to get your perception 'outside of the box' and you end up realizing that there is no 'outside of the box', only a loop of perception that goes round and round... anyways, that was what originally turned me on to some of the ideas that i hope will be covered in this book.

Please tell me what you thought of this book and whether it turned you on to any other books or ideas of similar taste.

 

Godel, Escher, Bach . . ." is one of my favorite books. Douglas Hofstadter has done nothing less than identify, illustrate and explore many of the patterns found in human thought. These patterns may be found in virtually every area of human activity from art to literature to philosophy to religion to science to . . .

It is a dense piece of work. You are not likely to just breeze through it in a weekend, but it is easily one of the more important books available.

 

I really have to put this on a sticky note: go get this book.
Been meaning to for years ever since I picked up 'The Minds I' compiled by Hofstadter and Dennett. That book is tattered from so much use and I have yet to completely digest everything in it. I would imagine that Godel, Escher, Bach would be just as enlightening and well written.

 

I've also just recently picked up another Hofstadter book. Was passing a used bookstore and saw it in the window... called 'Metamagical Themas'. i have yet to really even look at it to see what it's all about but the further i get into GEB, the more impressed i am with Douglas H.

Hey Varuna, do you know of any other good books that deal with similar subject nature? Sciences, cognition and 'strange loops'?

I'll look for 'The Minds I'... the GEB edition i got was reprinted in (2000?) with a fresh intro by D.H. He's also freshened/edited the content with ideas/thoughts he's had since the original publication back in the 70's.

Thanks for the replies guys, i was beginning to think that this book was relegated to some dark nerdy corner, never to be read by anyone outside of the academic institutions!

 

For a somewhat mind blowing re-examination of the nature of physical reality, I recently discovered Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. He walks you through the history of physics in order to get you to the point where he can explain String Theory.

I am looking forward to reading The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose. It is a thorough description of the search for the underlying principles that govern the behavior of the physical universe.

I stand by my statement that Robert Pirsig's two books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila, contain one of the most vital philosophical perspectives I have encountered. His Metaphysics of Quality offers a lens through which one may see a primal glimpse of reality in its most fundamental nature.

 

loops, contradictions cycles... have you forgotten about the doors?

imagine two spirals, one flipped over so it goes in the opposite direction, layered on top of each other. go ahead, draw it if you can't imagine what it would look like. i'd say it's much more like this. it is very easy to get stuck in a loop, but there are always ways out.

 

Could there be such a thing?! A finite inner universe!?! Always seemed to me that the nature of being human was the nature of the duality of finite and infinite.... quite often, the "doors" end up being a part of a bigger "loop". In my questings, i've kind of come the the (loose) conclusion (are there any other kinds? ) that the only way out the door, was death.

A hard thing to talk about really... the type of thing where by it's true nature can never be revealed because that IS it's true nature... to never be revealed...

I used to be told by a professor that i admired:
If you've found the answer, then you're not looking hard enough.

Thanks for the references Varuna, i've heard OF those books... but haven't read them... i'll definately check out Zen and The Art of.... the first one reminds me stephen hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell... lots of the same type of stuff... thanks again