Gödel, Escher and Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
What is the book about as a whole?
Douglas Hofstadter introduces three highly complex human beings that specialized themselves in different fields and have a lot in common; they are connected in a very peculiar way. Gödel is a mathematician, Escher an artist and Bach a musician. They all developed complex systems in their fields that were unique and genius. The main theme in the book are systems, how do they work? Why do they work? Can they be complete? Can they be consistent? Can they be complete and consistent? How can we explain a system? Do we need a meta-system? And then...for that meta-system, do we need a meta-meta-system to explain it? So, it's a never ending loop. Another main inquiry is the complexity of our mind. Can we build one mind exactly or better than ours? Can artificial intelligence exist? The author deals with highly complex questions and notions, connecting them with the three characters mentioned above. The book takes the reader into another way of seeing and grasping things, and well our world is more complex than it appears to be.
Concepts
Important insights & questions in chronological order
My opinion of the book
I think the book is very complex, interesting and entertaining. It definitely made me see systems, mind, intelligence, symbols and patterns in a whole different light. I became familiar to what those concepts are and what we seek to explore understanding them. I'm really amazed by the capacity of human beings, it's really outstanding how far we've come in our search for truth and our creation of knowledge. I dare to say that we'll never get enough of truth, we will discover a lot more as time passes and we won't be tired of it. We really want to understand the purpose of being humans, of living and of being here, in this specific planet.
Douglas Hofstadter introduces three highly complex human beings that specialized themselves in different fields and have a lot in common; they are connected in a very peculiar way. Gödel is a mathematician, Escher an artist and Bach a musician. They all developed complex systems in their fields that were unique and genius. The main theme in the book are systems, how do they work? Why do they work? Can they be complete? Can they be consistent? Can they be complete and consistent? How can we explain a system? Do we need a meta-system? And then...for that meta-system, do we need a meta-meta-system to explain it? So, it's a never ending loop. Another main inquiry is the complexity of our mind. Can we build one mind exactly or better than ours? Can artificial intelligence exist? The author deals with highly complex questions and notions, connecting them with the three characters mentioned above. The book takes the reader into another way of seeing and grasping things, and well our world is more complex than it appears to be.
Concepts
- System: connected things forming a complex whole.
- Axiom: theorem.
- Theorem: proven strings produced by the rules.
- Isomorphism: information-preserving transformation; two complex structures mapped onto one another. Correlation between reality and a system.
- Formal system: a system that is made out of forms that are contained in reality, they have rules of operation and they are coherent and consistent.
- Entropy: everything disorganizes.
- Information: everything organizes.
- Zen: a philosophy that admits contradictions and that there are many other ways than reason to find truth.
- Recursiveness: there's not an end, there are loops inside loops inside loops...
- Floating attention: we are always grasping details.
- Chunking: grouping things into small fragments.
- Typographical: it eliminates isomorphism; it eliminates the meaning of the system.
Important insights & questions in chronological order
- What is intelligence?
- Human self-understanding is inseparable from participating in a culture.
- Do words and thoughts follow normal rules?
- How come we all create different meanings but still are able to communicate them or understand each other?
- Meaningless interpretations fail to see reality.
- Every symbol has a meaning, it may be active or passive.
- "Our mind grew up with reality"- Carl Sagan.
- Rules make us trust in results.
- There cannot be a system that is complete and consistent at the same time.
- Is our mind programmed?
- Language is not a formal system because it doesn't have axioms nor theorems.
- How can we be certain that logic is logical?
- "The world is more bizarre than what it seems."-Roberto Blum
- If we are not being constantly organized, disorder will take over us.
- How does evolution influenced our present?
- Do we create patterns? Do we find them? Do we interpret them?
- How can our culture influence our interpretations?
- Symbols may be arbitrary.
- A formal system that contradicts itself tears apart.
- How can we pop-outside the system?
- How do we know if our universe isn't a product of our minds?
- We choose the rules, it may be that they aren't really isomorphic with reality.
- "When you are totally immersed in something, you don't think, time doesn't exist, the world doesn't exist. That something is everything"-Roberto Blum.
- We are constantly changing because of the fact we are living.
- When you connect the different parts of something you perceive the whole.
- How do we know when something is real and when something is a dream?
- The intelligence of the whole is greater than the one of the individual.
- We can't know completely what happens in our organism in different levels.
- We can alter reality with our mind.
- Imagination helps us to survive.
- Dreams are the path to the unconscious.
- Is it possible for the mind to know itself?
- Does chaos have a pattern?
- Do we construct patterns or do we create them?
- How can we attained the capacity of introspection?
- To explain an order we need a superior order.
- Our introspection has limits; we cannot pop-out our mind, body nor world.
- Does religion influence our way of thinking?
- Are we trapped in our mind?
- What does it mean to loop? It's entering a circle, from which you cannot get out.
- Can we imagine something that is totally disconnected from reality?
- I will never be someone else and no one will ever be me.
- How does life arises? How does complexity arises?
- Who made the initial rules?
- Without zero all modern mathematics are impossible.
- We are not machines.
- Limitations allow things to emerge.
- The self has to get something from the outside world.
- What is beauty? Is beauty within everybody?
- We are creating knowledge.
- Are we totally original?
- Can machines be original? Can they make art?
- What is more complex? The universe or the mind?
- Why do we keep exploring more? Are we ever going to satisfy our curiosity? What is the end of it?
My opinion of the book
I think the book is very complex, interesting and entertaining. It definitely made me see systems, mind, intelligence, symbols and patterns in a whole different light. I became familiar to what those concepts are and what we seek to explore understanding them. I'm really amazed by the capacity of human beings, it's really outstanding how far we've come in our search for truth and our creation of knowledge. I dare to say that we'll never get enough of truth, we will discover a lot more as time passes and we won't be tired of it. We really want to understand the purpose of being humans, of living and of being here, in this specific planet.