Product Description

Hofstadters collection of quirky essays is unified by its primary concern: to examine the way people perceive and think..

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #204095 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 880 pages

Customer Reviews

THE book for castaways on a desert island
I've owned this book for years, and every time I return to it I still find something fresh to think about. It's crammed with ideas both playful and serious, all woven around the general theme of "what is mind, what is consciousness?" No-one will love every single chapter, and the ones I find dull might be the ones you love most, but you'll find something to ponder and play with on every page. Whether you start by designing your own alphabet or fooling around with recursion and self-reference, you'll be stimulated.

Many, many, many topics
In this collection of articles from his days as a regular with "Scientific American," Hoftstadter covers everything from self-referential statements (like this one), the Rubik's Cube, nuclear proliferation, the prisoner's dilemma, sexist language, fonts, and more.

Surprisingly, most of these topics become intertwined throughout the work (in fact, one of Hofstadter's goals). It's amazing as he runs the gamut, and you see the connections being built!

More accesible than 'Godel Escher Bach' review by P. Hancock
Having been turned onto this amazing author by 'GEB', I approached it with some caution. GEB was like going to the cinema to see Arnie Schwartzenegger and wandering into a complex foriegn language movie without subtitles instead. Fascinating and deep. Metamagical themas is more accesible and fun, containing a series of short articles on a vast array of subjects. I have long regretted the fact that the 'renaissance man' cannot exist anymore, there is too much to know. After reading this book, DH comes close.