On Sale: Feb 5, 1999
Page Count: 824 pages
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN-13: 9780465026562

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

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.

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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.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction
Winner of the National Book Award in Science
"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
"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
"A brilliant, creative, and very personal synthesis without precedent or peer in modern literature."
The American Mathematical Monthly
"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
"A huge, sprawling literary marvel, a philosophy book disguised as a book of entertainment disguised as a book of instruction."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"A triumph of cleverness, bravura performance."
Parabola
"A wondrous book that unites and explains, in a very entertaining way, many of the important ideas of recent intellectual history."
Commonweal
"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

Douglas R Hofstadter

About the Author

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.

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