|
|
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
|
 |
| Listen-Preis |
: |
EUR 17,57 |
| Unser Preis |
: |
EUR 14,20 |
| Sie sparen |
: |
EUR 3,37 (19%) |
| |
|
|
| 8 Used |
: | from EUR 9,21 |
| 16 Neu |
: | from EUR 14,20 |
| |
|
|
| Verfügbarkeit |
: |
Gewöhnlich versandfertig bei Amazon in 24 Stunden |
|
|
 |
|
|
| Editorial Reviews: | | |  | | Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is still something of a marvel. Besides being a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity, this book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Gödel. It also looks at the prospects for computers and artificial intelligence (AI) for mimicking human thought. For the general reader and the computer techie alike, this book still sets a standard for thinking about the future of computers and their relation to the way we think. Hofstadter's great achievement in Gödel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (such as undecidability, recursion, and "strange loops") accessible and remarkably entertaining. Borrowing a page from Lewis Carroll (who might well have been a fan of this book), each chapter presents dialogue between the Tortoise and Achilles, as well as other characters who dramatise concepts discussed later in more detail. Allusions to Bach's music (centring on his Musical Offering) and Escher's continually paradoxical artwork are plentiful here. This more approachable material lets the author delve into serious number theory (concentrating on the ramifications of Gödel's Theorem of Incompleteness) while stopping along the way to ponder the work of a host of other mathematicians, artists, and thinkers. The world has moved on since 1979, of course. The book predicted that computers probably won't ever beat humans in chess, though Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. And the vinyl record, which serves for some of Hofstadter's best analogies, is now left to collectors. Sections on recursion and the graphs of certain functions from physics look tantalising, like the fractals of recent chaos theory. And AI has moved on, of course, with mixed results. Yet Gödel, Escher, Bach remains a remarkable achievement. Its intellectual range and ability to let us visualise difficult mathematical concepts help make it one of this century's best for anyone who's interested in computers and their potential for real intelligence. --Richard Dragan | | | | Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is still something of a marvel. Besides being a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity, this book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Gödel. It also looks at the prospects for computers and artificial intelligence (AI) for mimicking human thought. For the general reader and the computer techie alike, this book still sets a standard for thinking about the future of computers and their relation to the way we think. Hofstadter's great achievement in Gödel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (like undecidability, recursion, and 'strange loops') accessible and remarkably entertaining. Borrowing a page from Lewis Carroll (who might well have been a fan of this book), each chapter presents dialogue between the Tortoise and Achilles, as well as other characters who dramatize concepts discussed later in more detail. Allusions to Bach's music (centering on his Musical Offering) and Escher's continually paradoxical artwork are plentiful here. This more approachable material lets the author delve into serious number theory (concentrating on the ramifications of Gödel's Theorem of Incompleteness) while stopping along the way to ponder the work of a host of other mathematicians, artists, and thinkers. The world has moved on since 1979, of course. The book predicted that computers probably won't ever beat humans in chess, though Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. And the vinyl record, which serves for some of Hofstadter's best analogies, is now left to collectors. Sections on recursion and the graphs of certain functions from physics look tantalizing, like the fractals of recent chaos theory. And AI has moved on, of course, with mixed results. Yet Gödel, Escher, Bach remains a remarkable achievement. Its intellectual range and ability to let us visualize difficult mathematical concepts help make it one of this century's best for anyone who's interested in computers and their potential for real intelligence. --Richard Dragan Topics Covered: J.S. Bach, M.C. Escher, Kurt Gödel: biographical information and work, artificial intelligence (AI) history and theories, strange loops and tangled hierarchies, formal and informal systems, number theory, form in mathematics, figure and ground, consistency, completeness, Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, recursive structures, theories of meaning, propositional calculus, typographical number theory, Zen and mathematics, levels of description and computers; theory of mind: neurons, minds and thoughts; undecidability; self-reference and self-representation; Turing test for machine intelligence. | |
| Custom Reviews: | |
|
| | | I read this book first at age of 17; being a teenager at the time, interested in Mathematics, Computer Science, Biology, Philosophy, and playing the piano and Baroque music. What can I say? This is one of the very few books which really influenced my life, my thinking. It is a wonderful masterpiece, written by a brilliant and witty mind. It combines a lot of fields like mathematics, computer science, biology, genetics, music, art and philosophy and more. It centers around Gödels incompleteness theorem, and in a consequence, it discusses the limits of formal systems and our brain - and therefore, of course, if and how it will be possible to create artificial intelligence. It was written in the 70's which was "High Noon Time" in research of artifical intelligence. If you plan to read it at a whole, don't expect it to be easy lecture. It took me years to really completely understand the book (stating that I read it in parts). However, every chapter is introduced by a "prelude", a dialoge between different characters. Even if you don't read the chapters, you will enjoy the book just by reading these dialogues. I think this is a must-read for all people interested in science and art, especially students.
| | Nice read if you share the urge to get rid of your "soul" | |
| | If you read this book, and find the energy to follow the author through his entirely left-brained labyrinth of somewhat fascinating but entirely cynical thoughts, you might end up being a believer... He's conjuring all that he understands of arts, music and sciences to convince you that science actually can explain everything that makes us human, at least in so far as your silly little wishes for transcendence, life after death, to have a "soul" or a "self" or something, and all the other subjective crap that no one can explain anyway is just an illusion, and something we would be much happier without, hailing to the "Endsieg" of science.
Of course he's putting in at the beginning what he's getting out in the end, but because the book is so long, it takes a while to understand what he's really trying to say, and exhausts your will to disagree on the way with endless mindgames of recursive processes.
His treatment of artwork and music is fascinating, but a little ignorant of what music and art are about generally.
Of course, it's a nice try at connecting arts and science, but always with the big transcendence-defying message in the background... as if he were a kind of self-announced pope in a computer religion, in which life is devoid of all sense and "complexity" is the new Jesus and tao. So, if someone you love dies, and you strongly feel that this person is still with you somehow, he's just loughing in your face at your naivity.
This book has made me really angry at how ignorant of the very basic essences of being alife, of "being" you can become.
Nothing of the substances of my imagination and perception can ever be "seen" or experienced by simulating or looking in to my brain. There is always the subjective perspective, and it always stays the subjective perspective, even if Mr Hofstadter is, for what reason over, ignoring it so powerfully.
| | Nice read if you share the urge to get rid of your "soul" | |
| | If you read this book, and find the energy to follow the author through his entirely left-brained labyrinth of somewhat fascinating but entirely cynical thoughts, you might end up being a believer... He's conjuring all that he understands of arts, music and sciences to convince you that science actually can explain everything that makes us human, at least in so far as your silly little wishes for transcendence, life after death, to have a "soul" or a "self" or something, and all the other subjective crap that no one can explain anyway is just an illusion, and something we would be much happier without, hailing to the "Endsieg" of science.
Of course he's putting in at the beginning what he's getting out in the end, but because the book is so long, it takes a while to understand what he's really trying to say, and exhausts your will to disagree on the way with endless mindgames of recursive processes.
His treatment of artwork and music is fascinating, but a little ignorant of what music and art are about generally.
Of course, it's a nice try at connecting arts and science, but always with the big transcendence-defying message in the background... as if he were a kind of self-announced pope in a computer religion, in which life is devoid of all sense and "complexity" is the new Jesus and tao. So, if someone you love dies, and you strongly feel that this person is still with you somehow, he's just loughing in your face at your naivity.
This book has made me really angry at how ignorant of the very basic essences of being alife, of "being" you can become.
Nothing of the substances of my imagination and perception can ever be "seen" or experienced by simulating or looking in to my brain. There is always the subjective perspective, and it always stays the subjective perspective, even if Mr Hofstadter is, for what reason over, ignoring it so powerfully.
| | | I was once told there are two kinds of people: those who get past chapter 7 in GEB, and those who don't. It saddens me to be in the second group, but the part I did read has left an intangible pattern weaving somewhere back there in my mind.
| | | This book will snare you, captivate you and turn you into a geek, even if you don't want to be a geek.
| |
|
|
Haupt
Warenkorb
Bookmarken Sie Diese Seite
Kontakt
