I Am a Strange Loop
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| I Am A Strange Loop | |
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| Author | Douglas Hofstadter |
| 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 |
| OCLC Number | 64554976 |
| LC Classification | BD438.5 .H64 2007 |
| 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][10]
[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". Time Magazine. 2007-03-15. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1599720,00.html.
- ^ "Hofstadter pages". Megite/Discover. http://www.megite.com/discover/hofstadter.
- ^ George Johnson (2007-03-01). "A New Journey into Hofstadter's Mind - book review". Scientific American. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-new-journey-into-hofsta.
- ^ "Me, My Soul, and I". Wired. March 2007. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/play.html?pg=3. Retrieved 2007-12-10.
- ^ Greg Ross (2007-03-22). Author Interview. American Scientist Online. http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/douglas-r-hofstadter.
- ^ John Derbyshire (2007-03-23). ""The I's Have It" - book review". The Wall Street Journal. http://olimu.com/Journalism/2007/Texts/StrangeLoop.htm.
- ^ "The Mind Reader". New York Times Magazine. 2007-04-01. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/magazine/01wwlnQ4.t.html.
- ^ 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 2007-12-10.
- ^ "An interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter about I Am a Strange Loop". Tal Cohen. 2008-06-11. http://tal.forum2.org/hofstadter_interview.
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