Gödel, Escher, Bach
an Eternal Golden Braid
Contributors
Buy from Other Retailers:
- On Sale
- Feb 5, 1999
- Page Count
- 824 pages
- Publisher
- Basic Books
- ISBN-13
- 9780465026562
A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll
“Every few decades an unknown author brings out a book of such depth, charity, range, wit, beauty, and originality that it is recognized at once as a major literary event. This is such a work.” —Scientific American
GEB is a unique insight into the nature of “I,” self, soul, and consciousness, centered on a notion that its youthful author dubbed “strange loop,” inspired by the twisty self-referential construction invented by logician Kurt Gödel, whereby a sentence asserts its own unprovability. The book’s chapters alternate with Bach-like contrapuntal dialogues between whimsical characters (especially Achilles and the Tortoise), and each dialogue’s intricate structure exemplifies the notion being discussed in it, thus creating indirect self-reference (a fact unsuspected by the characters). The book, filled with analogies, wordplay, humor, and mind-twisting prints by M. C. Escher, has inspired generations of bright students to study cognitive science and the philosophy of mind.
Genre:
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction
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Winner of the National Book Award in Science
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"Every few decades an unknown author brings out a book of such depth, clarity, range, wit, beauty and originality that it is recognized at once as a major literary event. This is such a work."Martin Gardner, Scientific American
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"In some ways, Godel, Escher, Bach is an entire humanistic education between the covers of a single book. So, for my next visit to a desert island, give me sun, sand, water and GEB, and I'll live happily ever after."John L. Casti, Nature
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"A brilliant, creative, and very personal synthesis without precedent or peer in modern literature."The American Mathematical Monthly
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"I have never seen anything quite like this book. It has a youthful vitality and a wonderful brilliance, and I think that it may become something of a classic."Jeremy Bernstein
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"A huge, sprawling literary marvel, a philosophy book disguised as a book of entertainment disguised as a book of instruction."Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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"A triumph of cleverness, bravura performance."Parabola
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"A wondrous book that unites and explains, in a very entertaining way, many of the important ideas of recent intellectual history."Commonweal
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"Godel, Escher, Bach was a triumphantly successful presentation of quite difficult concepts for a popular audience. There has been nothing like it in computer science before or since."Ernest Davis, IEEE Expert
