Metamagical Themas

Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern

Contributors

By Douglas R Hofstadter

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Aug 4, 2008
Page Count
880 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780786723867

Price

$23.99

Price

$30.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. ebook $23.99 $30.99 CAD
  2. Trade Paperback $34.99 $43.99 CAD

The eclectic and classic collection of essays from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach

“Enormously ambitious and hugely interesting.” –New York Times Book Review


Hofstadter’s collection of quirky essays is unified by its primary concern: to examine the way people perceive and think.

  • “Enormously ambitious and hugely interesting.”
    New York Times Book Review
  • “The closest thing imaginable to taking a voyage through a mind.”
    San Francisco Chronicle
  • “‘Delight’ is the operational word.”
    Chicago Tribune
  • “Douglas Hofstadter is a scientist with the inspired madness of a poet.”
    New Republic
  • “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.”
    Daniel C. Dennett, Tufts University
  • “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.”
    Martin Gardner
  • “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

Douglas R Hofstadter

About the Author

Douglas R. Hofstadter is College of Arts and Sciences Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he also directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition. He is the author or co-author of nine books, including I Am a Strange Loop and Surfaces and Essences, and has contributed to ten more. He lives in Bloomington.

Learn more about this author