Hofstadter 1979 Harvester Press

Hofstadter DR (1979) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid. A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll. Harvester Press 499 pp.

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Hofstadter DR (1979) Harvester Press

Abstract: "Hofstadter has emphasized that Gödel, Escher, Bach is not about the relationships of mathematics, art, and music, but rather about how cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms. At one point in the book, he presents an analogy about how the individual neurons of the brain coordinate to create a unified sense of a coherent mind by comparing it to the social organization displayed in a colony of ants." - Wikipedia

• Bioblast editor: Gnaiger E

Eating its own tail

'Lady Lovelace, no less than Babbage, was profoundly aware that with the invention of the Analytical Engine, mankind was flirting with mechanized intelligence - particularly if the Engine were capable of "eating its own tail" (the way Babbage described the Strange Loop created when a machine reaches in and alters its own stored program). In an 1842 memoir, she wrote that the A.E. "might act upon other things besides number". While Babbage dreamt of creating a chess or tic-tac-toe automaton, she suggested that his Engine, with pitches and harmonies coded into its spinning cylinders, "might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of commplexity or extent."'

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  M. C. Escher: Dragon (wood-engraving, 1952). 'However much this dragon tries to be spatial, he remains completely flat. Two incisions are made in the paper on which he is printed. Then it is folded in such a way as to leave two square openings. But this dragon is an obstinate beast, and in spite of his two dimensions he persists in assuming that he has three; so he sticks his head through one of the holes and his tail through the other.']]

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