Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19990312105829.00af5ce0@popmail.mcs.net>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 10:58:29 -0600
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net>
Subject: "Go:del, Escher, Bach" 20th-anniversary edition
In-Reply-To: <ECS9903111207A@imap.uea.ac.uk>
The 20th aniversary edition of Douglas Hofstadter's book "Go:del, Escher,
Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" has recently been published by Basic Books.
As a book with much to say about self-referential systems, it has
implications not just for the self-referential aspects of typical memes,
but also to the self-referential aspects of memetics itself.
A new preface helps clarify the book's main thesis that what Hofstadter
calls "strange loops" play a key role in what conscious beings call
consciousness. It also helps set aside some of the misinterpretations that
the book has been given over the past 20 years, such as notions that it is
a "new age" book, a book describing reality as a system of interconnecting
braids, a book advocating Zen or a book praising John Cage. (Perhaps I
should take the misinterpretations of my own work in stride...)
Whether you read GEB years ago, or are just now thinking of getting a copy,
you will find the new preface--and the rest of the book--both informative
and entertaining.
--Aaron Lynch
http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/thoughtcontagion.html
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