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From: klahr@csd2.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Godel, Escher, Bach
Message-ID: <2740002@csd2.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Oct-85 21:36:00 EST
Article-I.D.: csd2.2740002
Posted: Mon Oct 28 21:36:00 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Oct-85 06:38:33 EST
References: <2336@flame.warwick.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
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Here's someone who just meandered onto this net, giving his $0.02 worth:

I read GEB and I liked it very much.  Granted, there are sections where I felt
toyed with, others that I felt were far too long-winded (as was this past
phrase- see what I just did?  That's a fairly common Hofstadter cutesy ploy), 
and others that I found fuzzy, confusing, and not too comprehensible.  But in
return for putting up with these nuisances, I got a very entertaining and
very readable introduction to one man's philosophical views of Computer
Science and Artificial Intelligence (capitalized as the heroes of this tome-
sized epic).  I thought I was given a fairly good qualitative feel for the
substance of 20th century mathematical set theory, as embodied by the famous
Godel's Theorem, and found the analogies made to molecular biology, Bach
cantatas, and Escher drawings very interesting and helpful to following
the overall scheme of things.  The heart of the book is Hofstadter's
tying together the implications of G, E, and B's use of Recursion with his
own thesis for what is THE true nature of the mind, what is intelligence,
and what "true" artificial intelligence is.  While I don't agree with           

it, I thought I was given an intelligent hypothesis.  If you want a good,
nontextbook type intro to AI, if you're interested in cognitive theory, or
if you want to know more about Godel's Theorem than "no system can be
perfectly self contained", or even if you'd like to know more about Bach or
Escher, try it!  By the way, Hofstadter has published another book, a
collection of columns he wrote for Scientific American on similar topics.  The
book is called Metamagical Themas (an anagram of Mathematical Games, the name
of the column by Martin Gardner that H's column replaced).