Monday, January 10, 2005
Gödel, Escher Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid
Recently there has been a surge of "popular science" books but the winner of the 1980 Pullitzer for General Non-Fiction was a truly mind-boggling book "Gödel, Escher Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid".
In the words of the author GEB is:
"GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"
The book is an exploration of various complex ideas...centring around Hofstadter's concept of "Strange Loops".
I think this is possibly the most eye-opening book I've ever read, the book is written in a very unusual style, with ideas being explored through conversations between a couple of protagonists.
Read it!
- posted by bigkevmcd @ 4:27 AM
