Basic Books (AZ)</br></br>Product Description</br></br><div>Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of ?maps or links between formal systems. However according to Hofstadter the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons then so too will computers attain human intelligence.<i> G?del Escher Bach</i> is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning reduction recursion and much more.</div></br></br>Amazon.com Review</br></br>Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts Douglas R. Hofstadter's <I>G?del Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid</I> 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 G?del. 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.<p> Hofstadter's great achievement in <I>G?del?? Escher?? Bach</I> 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 m