I Am a Strange Loop
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| I Am A Strange Loop | |
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| Author | Douglas Hofstadter |
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| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Consciousness, strange loops, intelligence |
| Publisher | Basic Books |
| Publication date | March 26th, 2007 |
| Media type | hardback |
| Pages | 412 pages |
| ISBN | 978-0465030781 |
| Preceded by | Gödel, Escher, Bach |
I Am a Strange Loop is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a strange loop originally developed in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
| “ | In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference. | ” |
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— Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop p.363
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Hofstadter had previously expressed disappointment with how Gödel, Escher, Bach, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for general nonfiction, was received. In the preface to the twentieth-anniversary edition, Hofstadter laments that his book has been misperceived as a hodge-podge of neat things with no central theme. He states: "GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"[1]
He sought to remedy this problem in I Am a Strange Loop, by focusing on and expounding upon the central message of Gödel, Escher, Bach. He seeks to demonstrate how the properties of self-referential systems, demonstrated most famously in Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, can be used to describe the unique properties of minds.[2][3]
As an exploration of the concept of "self", Hofstadter explores his own life, and those he has been close to.[4][5][6][7][8][9]
[edit] External links
[edit] See also
- Autopoiesis
- Droste effect
- Euthyphro dilemma
- Feedback loop
- Gödel, Escher, Bach
- Identity, in particular, the Ship of Theseus paradox
- Klein bottle
- Möbius strip
- Optical feedback
- Oroborus
- Paradox
- Shepard tone
- Strange loop
[edit] References
- ^ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1999). Gödel, Escher, Bach. Basic Books. pp. P–2 (Twentieth-anniversary preface). ISBN 0465026567.
- ^ The Year of Mathemagical Thinking March 15, 2007
- ^ Hofstadter pages at Megite/Discover
- ^ A New Journey into Hofstadter's Mind - book review by George Johnson in Scientific American, March 2007
- ^ "Me, My Soul, and I". Wired. March 2007. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/play.html?pg=3. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
- ^ Author Interview by Greg Ross, American Scientist Online, March 22, 2007
- ^ The I's Have It - book review by John Derbyshire, The Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2007
- ^ The Mind Reader New York Times Magazine, April 1, 2007
- ^ Gardner, Martin (august 2007). "Do Loops Explain Consciousness? Review of I Am a Strange Loop" (pdf). Notices of the American Mathematical Society 54 (7): 853. http://www.ams.org/notices/200707/tx070700852p.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
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