Metamagical Themas

Douglas Hofstadter

"Doug Hofstadter is rapidly becoming the Hamlet of our times: whatever he says is both exact and double-edged, reassuring but provocative, poetic and self-challenging. His scariest insights and most agonizing intellectual probings are graced, like Hamlet's, with humor, affection, and a kind of mad musical charm"

LEONARD BERNSTEIN

"The incredible Dr. Hofstadter is back, in golden-braid form, with a collection of wide ranging essays that swarm with extraordinary ideas, brilliant fables, deep philosophical questions, and Carrollian word play. The man is as incapable of writing opaquely as his alter-ego Egbert B. Gebstadter is incapable of writing clearly. Like his previous G6del, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, the new book glitters with Godelian self-reference jokes, Escherlike illustrations, and Bachlike fugues. But don't waste your time reading this last sentence because it doesn't say anything."

MARTIN GARDNER

"This wonderful collection tackles virtually every area of fascination and controversy in science today, from mathematics and quantum mechanics through evolutionary theory to artificial intelligence, the nature of human thought and rational choice, and ties them together by showing how understanding in one area enhances understanding in others. Hofstadter realizes that before you can "prove" or "refute" anything, you must understand. His deceptively leisurely tours of these many problem spaces are extraordinarily powerful imaginationstretchers, brilliant pedagogy that is accessible to the beginner, but perhaps even more valuable and eye-opening to the expert, whose mind is so often hemmed in by hard-won habits of thought."

DANIEL C. DENNETT
Professor of Philosophy
Tufts University

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