Short description
Originally published by Penguin in 1980, when it was winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction, an anniversary edition of an illustrated examination of the nature of human thought processes.
Long description
G(del, Escher, Bach is a Pulitzer Prizewinning treatise exploring patterns and symbols in the thinking of mathematician Kurt G(del, artist M. C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach. A groundbreaking book that has set the standard for interdisciplinary writing. A book every thinking reader must have.. Douglas Hofstadters book is concerned directly with the nature of maps or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gdel Escher and Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.
Review
Even without the contemporary relevance lent the book by the specter of global warming. The Little Ice Age would be an engrossing historical volume.