Gödel, Escher & Bach

[gusl]

I like to call my study Gödel, Escher & Bach studies. I learned about the book after no less than 3 people mentioned it when I described the ESSLLI2002 conference to them (I can't remember why exactly, at the time I was mostly interested in the concept of "flow of information").

Anyway, two weeks ago, I visited the Escher museum in Den Haag, who according to the 20-minute film shown in the museum, considered Bach a "similar soul". Bach, it turns out, is having a festival here in Amsterdam

Also, I've recently read there is a movie after the book: it's titled "VICTIM OF THE BRAIN".

Comments

[jbouwens.livejournal.com]

I started reading GEB last week, and it's a pretty imposing book: 800 or so pages, large format, small font. It will take a couple months to work my way through it.

The introduction Hofstadter wrote for the 20th anniversary is sort of a summary, and it's quite promising.

An Eternal Golden Braid

[http://users.livejournal.com/_greg/]

I read GEB when it first came out (thanks to Martin Gardner's recommendation). I enjoyed it very much. Some of its imaginative entries into subtle abstractions have stayed with me. I still laugh with delight when I recall the scene with the Meta-Genies. I also recall the book seemed to lose some momentum in the middle and I set it aside for awhile.

The best thing I got out of GEB was that it led me to read the collection "The Mind's I" edited by Hofstedter and Daniel Dennet. TMI has had much more impact on me that GEB. And THI led me to the rest of Daniel Dennet's work. He is in my top ten "read everything he writes" list. My life has been immeasurably enriched by these sources!

All of this closes a loop - in your last message to me you connected some of what I'd been saying with the term "mysticism", and I've not found the time to adequately respond. Much of the content of GEB and TMI is material which is often called mysticism. Yet nothing is deliberately made mysterious (yes, it is, isn't it ;-) and this kind of "mysticism", like Zen Buddhism, is the opposite of fuzzy thinking. I detest the "New Age" (nothing new about it) kind of mysticism and wish that the same term was not used for both domains.