I've owned a couple copies of GEB, but still have yet to finish any of them. (I did finish and LOVE "I am a Strange Loop", though.)
About the time I started getting serious about reading it, I had already made the transition over to electronic readers (how I read "Strange Loop"), and unfortunately, GEB never made that transition over. There is nominally an electronic copy floating about, but it's a shoddy PDF that's hardly legible on any of my reading devices.
Oh. That’s a pity. Right as I had decided to check out GEB in ebook format. Perhaps I can find a good edition in PDF format.. hopefully. Thank you for the intel, Chris.
To be fair, things may have improved since I last looked. It's been a couple of years, and I would hope that any halfway competent publisher would have figured out the eBook sales they're missing.
Wow! That was an intense read! Loved every sentence, felt every word, emotion with you. Thank you so much for sharing, John. Unfortunately, I haven’t read GEB, I’m sorry to say I don’t remember if I’ve heard of it or not. I do have most of the paperbacks in that shelfie, huge fan of Kafka, and philosophy and psychoanalysis too.
I thought of looking for an ebook of GEB, but read above Chris J. Karr’s message how difficult it is to find it. I’ll try though, even get the PDF as a last resort. But first I will read your Act of Disciples, of course! That goes without saying. lol.
Once again, thank you, John. It was a pleasure to read your article.
GEB will always be one of my favorites. I was fortunate enough to see Hofstadter give a maths lecture at my University shortly after reading the book. All about non-Euclidean geometries and such as I recall. But I never got to meet him. I will say that having him read an essay of yours out loud to Dennett in which you make fun of Dennett is priceless.
I enjoyed GEB. It was a charming conceit. I had taken a course on recursive function theory a few years earlier, so it was a hoot to see a major chunk of the course presented in such a relatively accessible manner. Unfortunately for popular discourse, GEB didn’t go onto the increasingly relevant ramifications of Godel’s theorem and model theory. Modern AI is all theorem. All the issues of the relationship of theorems to mathematical objects is glossed over or ignored. Hofstadter owes us a sequel.
Footnote to the comment I just posted: On the subject of the daunting challenge of getting people to read things I've written to read stuff I've written, let me climb up on my hobbyhorse for a second to say that Sundman figures it out! seems to have sailed into a substack Sargasso sea, by which I mean that my posts this autumn don't seem to be attracting new subscribers in the way my posts in the spring and summer did. I'm trying to get a handle on why that might be and what I might do, course-correction-wise, but in the meantime I you like my stuff and think others might as well, I earnestly entreat you to help me spread the word. Shares and restacks, for example, are easy to effectuate and quite efficacious.
You make several interesting points here. First, your description of GEB as a 'charming conceit.' It almost sounds dismissive, but it's not. I think it's a charming way of describing that book, actually. It is pretty remarkable that Hofstadter had the nerve to take something like 'recursive function theory,' which 9,999 out of 10,000 typical readers have never heard of, much less mastered, and make and presume to make it accessible. About the 'increasingly relevant ramifications of Gödel's theorem and model theory,' all I can say is, Please tell me more. And as for getting Hofstadter to write a sequel, you can have that one, with my blessing. I'm going to stay focused on getting him to read Cheap Complex Devices.
Of course I read it, John! And yes, that was a great dinner with Dennett and Hofstadter. I had forgotten your poking fun at Dennett; I should find and read that piece. (I still like Dan's arguments, though I wish he hadn't got caught up with the "brights".)
I've owned a couple copies of GEB, but still have yet to finish any of them. (I did finish and LOVE "I am a Strange Loop", though.)
About the time I started getting serious about reading it, I had already made the transition over to electronic readers (how I read "Strange Loop"), and unfortunately, GEB never made that transition over. There is nominally an electronic copy floating about, but it's a shoddy PDF that's hardly legible on any of my reading devices.
Oh. That’s a pity. Right as I had decided to check out GEB in ebook format. Perhaps I can find a good edition in PDF format.. hopefully. Thank you for the intel, Chris.
Have a wonderful week.
To be fair, things may have improved since I last looked. It's been a couple of years, and I would hope that any halfway competent publisher would have figured out the eBook sales they're missing.
Thank you, Chris. I’ll check it out tomorrow. It’s already 00:50 here in Spain. I should try to sleep now, although I’d love to continue to read. 😄
Goodnight and happy reading! 🧡
Wow! That was an intense read! Loved every sentence, felt every word, emotion with you. Thank you so much for sharing, John. Unfortunately, I haven’t read GEB, I’m sorry to say I don’t remember if I’ve heard of it or not. I do have most of the paperbacks in that shelfie, huge fan of Kafka, and philosophy and psychoanalysis too.
I thought of looking for an ebook of GEB, but read above Chris J. Karr’s message how difficult it is to find it. I’ll try though, even get the PDF as a last resort. But first I will read your Act of Disciples, of course! That goes without saying. lol.
Once again, thank you, John. It was a pleasure to read your article.
Have a lovely week.
GEB will always be one of my favorites. I was fortunate enough to see Hofstadter give a maths lecture at my University shortly after reading the book. All about non-Euclidean geometries and such as I recall. But I never got to meet him. I will say that having him read an essay of yours out loud to Dennett in which you make fun of Dennett is priceless.
I enjoyed GEB. It was a charming conceit. I had taken a course on recursive function theory a few years earlier, so it was a hoot to see a major chunk of the course presented in such a relatively accessible manner. Unfortunately for popular discourse, GEB didn’t go onto the increasingly relevant ramifications of Godel’s theorem and model theory. Modern AI is all theorem. All the issues of the relationship of theorems to mathematical objects is glossed over or ignored. Hofstadter owes us a sequel.
Footnote to the comment I just posted: On the subject of the daunting challenge of getting people to read things I've written to read stuff I've written, let me climb up on my hobbyhorse for a second to say that Sundman figures it out! seems to have sailed into a substack Sargasso sea, by which I mean that my posts this autumn don't seem to be attracting new subscribers in the way my posts in the spring and summer did. I'm trying to get a handle on why that might be and what I might do, course-correction-wise, but in the meantime I you like my stuff and think others might as well, I earnestly entreat you to help me spread the word. Shares and restacks, for example, are easy to effectuate and quite efficacious.
You make several interesting points here. First, your description of GEB as a 'charming conceit.' It almost sounds dismissive, but it's not. I think it's a charming way of describing that book, actually. It is pretty remarkable that Hofstadter had the nerve to take something like 'recursive function theory,' which 9,999 out of 10,000 typical readers have never heard of, much less mastered, and make and presume to make it accessible. About the 'increasingly relevant ramifications of Gödel's theorem and model theory,' all I can say is, Please tell me more. And as for getting Hofstadter to write a sequel, you can have that one, with my blessing. I'm going to stay focused on getting him to read Cheap Complex Devices.
Of course I read it, John! And yes, that was a great dinner with Dennett and Hofstadter. I had forgotten your poking fun at Dennett; I should find and read that piece. (I still like Dan's arguments, though I wish he hadn't got caught up with the "brights".)
A great essay. And leaving medium to commit to a far better space is an excellent idea.