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Gödel, Escher, Bach

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Gödel, Escher, Bach:
an Eternal Golden Braid
Cover of the first edition
AuthorDouglas Hofstadter
LanguageEnglish
SubjectsConsciousness,intelligence,recursivity,mathematics
PublisherBasic Books
Publication date
1979
Publication placeUnited States
Pages777
ISBN978-0-465-02656-2
OCLC40724766
510/.1 21
LC ClassQA9.8.H63 1999
Followed byI Am a Strange Loop

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid,also known asGEB,is a 1979 book byDouglas Hofstadter.

By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logicianKurt Gödel,artistM. C. Escher,and composerJohann Sebastian Bach,the book expounds concepts fundamental tomathematics,symmetry,andintelligence.Through short stories, illustrations, and analysis, the book discusses how systems can acquire meaningful context despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discussesself-referenceand formal rules,isomorphism,what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of "meaning" itself.

In response to confusion over the book's theme, Hofstadter emphasized thatGödel, Escher, Bachis not about the relationships ofmathematics, art,andmusic—but rather about howcognitionemergesfrom hidden neurological mechanisms. One point in the book presents an analogy about how individualneuronsin thebraincoordinate to create a unified sense of a coherent mind by comparing it to the social organization displayed in acolony of ants.[1][2]

Gödel, Escher, Bachwon thePulitzer Prizefor general non-fiction[3]and theNational Book Awardfor Science Hardcover.[4][a]Despite the success of the book, Hofstadter felt that audiences did not adequately grasp what he felt was the main idea of the book:strange loops.In an attempt to remedy this, he publishedI Am a Strange Loopin 2007.

Structure[edit]

Gödel, Escher, Bachtakes the form of interweaving narratives. The main chapters alternate with dialogues between imaginary characters, usuallyAchilles and the tortoise,first used byZeno of Eleaand later byLewis Carrollin "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles".These origins are related in the first two dialogues, and later ones introduce new characters such as the Crab. These narratives frequently dip intoself-referenceandmetafiction.

Word playalso features prominently in the work. Puns are occasionally used to connect ideas, such as "the Magnificrab, Indeed" with Bach'sMagnificat in D;"SHRDLU,Toy of Man's Designing "with Bach'sJesu, Joy of Man's Desiring;and "Typographical Number Theory",or"TNT",which inevitably reacts explosively when it attempts to make statements about itself. One dialogue contains a story about a genie (from the Arabic"Djinn") and various" tonics "(of both theliquidandmusicalvarieties), which is titled "Djinn and Tonic".Sometimes word play has no significant connection, such as the dialogue" AMuOffering ", which has no close affinity to Bach'sThe Musical Offering.

One dialogue in the book is written in the form of acrab canon,in which every line before the midpoint corresponds to an identical line past the midpoint. The conversation still makes sense due to uses of common phrases that can be used as either greetings or farewells ( "Good day" ) and the positioning of lines that double as an answer to a question in the next line. Another is a sloth canon, where one character repeats the lines of another, but slower and negated.

Themes[edit]

The book contains many instances ofrecursionandself-reference,where objects and ideas speak about or refer back to themselves. One isQuining,a term Hofstadter invented in homage toWillard Van Orman Quine,referring to programs that produce their ownsource code.Another is the presence of a fictional author in the index,Egbert B. Gebstadter,a man with initials E, G, and B and a surname that partially matches Hofstadter. A phonograph dubbed "Record Player X" destroys itself by playing a record titledI Cannot Be Played on Record Player X(an analogy toGödel's incompleteness theorems), an examination ofcanonform inmusic,and a discussion of Escher'slithograph of two hands drawing each other.

To describe such self-referencing objects, Hofstadter coins the term "strange loop"—a concept he examines in more depth in his follow-up bookI Am a Strange Loop.To escape many of the logical contradictions brought about by these self-referencing objects, Hofstadter discussesZenkoans.He attempts to show readers how to perceive reality outside their own experience and embrace such paradoxical questions by rejecting the premise—a strategy also called "unasking".

Elements ofcomputer sciencesuch ascall stacksare also discussed inGödel, Escher, Bach,as one dialogue describes the adventures of Achilles and the Tortoise as they make use of "pushing potion" and "popping tonic" involving entering and leaving different layers of reality. The same dialogue has a genie with a lamp containing another genie with another lamp and so on. Subsequent sections discuss the basic tenets of logic, self-referring statements, ( "typeless" ) systems, and even programming. Hofstadter further createsBlooP and FlooP,two simpleprogramming languages,to illustrate his point.

Puzzles[edit]

The book is filled with puzzles, including Hofstadter'sMU puzzle,which contrasts reasoning within a defined logical system with reasoning about that system. Another example can be found in the chapter titledContracrostipunctus,which combines the wordsacrosticandcontrapunctus(counterpoint). In this dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise, the author hints that there is a contrapunctal acrostic in the chapter that refers both to the author (Hofstadter) and Bach. This can be spelled out by taking the first word of each paragraph, to reveal "Hofstadter's Contracrostipunctus Acrostically Backwards Spells J. S. Bach". The second acrostic is found by taking the first letters of the words of the first, and reading them backwards to get "J S Bach", as the acrostic sentence self-referentially states.

Reception and impact[edit]

Gödel, Escher, Bachwon thePulitzer Prizefor general non-fiction and theNational Book Awardfor Science Hardcover.

Martin Gardner's July 1979 column inScientific Americanstated, "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."[5]

For Summer 2007, theMassachusetts Institute of Technologycreated an online course for high school students built around the book.[6]

In its February 19, 2010, investigative summary on the2001 anthrax attacks,theFederal Bureau of Investigationsuggested thatBruce Edwards Ivinswas inspired by the book to hide secret codes based uponnucleotide sequencesin theanthrax-laced letters he allegedly sent in September and October 2001,[7]using bold letters, as suggested on page 404 of the book.[8][9]It was also suggested that he attempted to hide the book from investigators by throwing it in the trash.[10]

In 2019, British mathematicianMarcus du Sautoycurated a series of events at London'sBarbican Centreto celebrate the book's fortieth anniversary.[11]

I Am a Strange Loop[edit]

Main article:I Am a Strange Loop

Hofstadter has expressed some frustration with howGödel, Escher, Bachwas received. He felt that readers did not fully grasp that strange loops were supposed to be the central theme of the book, and attributed this confusion to the length of the book and the breadth of the topics covered.[12][13]

To remedy this issue, Hofstadter publishedI Am a Strange Loopin 2007, which had a more focused discussion of the idea.[13]

Translation[edit]

Hofstadter claims the idea of translating his book "never crossed [his] mind" when he was writing it—but when his publisher brought it up, he was "very excited about seeing [the] book in other languages, especially… French." He knew, however, that "there were a million issues to consider" when translating,[14]since the book relies not only on word-play, but on "structural puns" as well—writing where the form and content of the work mirror each other (such as the "Crab canon"dialogue, which reads almost exactly the same forwards as backwards).

Hofstadter gives an example of translation trouble in the paragraph "Mr. Tortoise, Meet Madame Tortue", saying translators "instantly ran headlong into the conflict between the feminine gender of the French nountortueand the masculinity of my character, the Tortoise. "[14]Hofstadter agreed to the translators' suggestions of naming the French characterMadame Tortue,and the Italian versionSignorina Tartaruga.[15]Because of other troubles translators might have retaining meaning, Hofstadter "painstakingly went through every sentence ofGödel, Escher, Bach,annotating a copy for translators into any language that might be targeted. "[14]

Translation also gave Hofstadter a way to add new meaning and puns. For instance, inChinese,the subtitle is not a translation ofan Eternal Golden Braid,but a seemingly unrelated phraseJí Yì Bì( tập dị bích, literally "collection of exotic jades" ), which ishomophonictoGEBin Chinese. Some material regarding this interplay is in Hofstadter's later book,Le Ton beau de Marot,which is mainly about translation.

Editions[edit]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^This was theaward for hardcover Science.From 1980 to 1983, theNational Book Award historygave separate awards to hardcover and paperback books in many categories, includingseveral nonfiction subcategories.Most paperback award-winners were reprints of earlier works; the 1980 Science was eligible for both awards as a new book.

References[edit]

  1. ^By Analogy: A talk with the most remarkable researcher in artificial intelligence today, Douglas Hofstadter, the author of Gödel, Escher, BachWired Magazine, November 1995
  2. ^"Perspective of Mind: Douglas Hofstadter".bizint.
  3. ^The Prizes,Pulitzer, 1980
  4. ^"National Book Awards – 1980".National Book Foundation.Retrieved2021-07-28.
  5. ^Somers, James (23 October 2013)."The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think".The Atlantic.The Atlantic Media Company.Retrieved25 October2013.
  6. ^GEB,MIT
  7. ^"Amerithrax Investigative Summary"(PDF).United States Department of Justice. February 19, 2010. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 2010-11-28.Retrieved2010-11-10.
  8. ^"Page 404 of Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"(PDF).United States Department of Justice. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 2010-11-28.Retrieved2010-11-10.
  9. ^Willman, David(2011).The Mirage Man: Bruce Ivins, the Anthrax Attacks, and America's Rush to War.Bantam Books.p. 300.ISBN9780553807752.
  10. ^Shane, Scott (2010-02-19)."F.B.I., Laying Out Evidence, Closes Anthrax Case".The New York Times.ISSN0362-4331.Retrieved2021-06-09.
  11. ^Sautoy, Marcus du (2019-03-09)."Can AI become conscious? Bach, Escher and Gödel's 'strange loops' may have the answer".The Guardian.ISSN0261-3077.Retrieved2020-07-27.
  12. ^Hofstadter, Douglas R.(1999).Gödel, Escher, Bach.Basic Books. pp.P–1-23 (Twentieth-anniversary preface).ISBN0-465-02656-7.
  13. ^abBoden, Margaret (2017-02-06)."Self Assembly".American Scientist.Retrieved2023-07-15.
  14. ^abcHofstadter 1999,p. xxxiv.
  15. ^Hofstadter 1999,pp. xxxiv–xxxv.

External links[edit]

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