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Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern [Paperback]

Douglas Hofstadter
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

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Book Description

1985 0465045669 978-0465045662
Hofstadter’s collection of quirky essays is unified by its primary concern: to examine the way people perceive and think.

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Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern + Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid + I Am a Strange Loop
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Douglas R. Hofstadter directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition at Indiana University, and is the College of Arts and Sciences professor of cognitive science and computer science. He is the author of several highly regarded books, including Gödel, Escher, Bach and Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 852 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books (1985)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0465045669
  • ISBN-13: 978-0465045662
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.9 x 9.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #61,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
116 of 121 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Better than GEB? January 25, 2000
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Perhaps it is sacrilege, or stretching things a bit, but in my view this book tops GEB. Admittedly, I have read GEB several times, so maybe somebody who hasn't read GEB won't get the full benefit of Metamagical Themas. Here are my reasons for my opinion:

1) Hofstadter doesn't spend so much time being cute. Sure, all the jokes in GEB were funny, but they can get old, especially when you're going through the book a second time trying to delve deeper into an idea.

2) The variety of topics. Everything from Chopin to self reference to nuclear proliferation. Yet as the title might suggest, a common thread runs through all the topics. Hofstadter emphasizes this with his addendums to the original articles; he also has several new essays.

3) A great summary of Hofstadter's views on AI. If you read GEB and weren't really sure what he's about, reading the new Achilles and Tortoise dialogue, "Who shoves whom around in the careenium?", will clear things up. It did for me. Also, there's an article on Hofstadter's criticisms of the approaches that have been taken by AI experts (up to 1985, when the book was written).

In summary, GEB was an amazing work that was diluted to make it more palatable to non-technical people. Metamagical Themas is Hofstadter at full strength.

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79 of 82 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Hofstadter's approachable collection October 5, 2001
Format:Paperback
When I was in high school I discovered the joys of reading Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American. After a few years of pleasure he was replaced by someone else who (among other things) wrote on the joys of Rubik's cube and I found myself wasting weeks of time and filling notebooks with my quest to explore and solve the cube.

That columnist was Douglas Hofstadter, who brought the same skill at sharing his enthusiam for his topic that created the amazing, mind shattering 'Godel, Escher, Bach'. His column, that occupied the same place as "Mathemetical Games", was called "Metamagical Themas" (looking closely at those two names will tell you a lot about Douglas Hofstadter) and lasted for 13 issues.

This book is a compilation of those columns, each with a new endnote by Hofstadter and some letters received by the magazine and his reply.

Together they cover a large range of topics while keeping to the central concerns of most of Hofstadter's work; consciousness, patterns, music, language and computer systems.

The combination works superbly. This volume is much more easily approached than 'Godel, Escher, Bach' while raising similar questions in the mind of the reader. For those that have read the earlier work there is not just the joy of more of Hofstadter's writing on diverse topics but the sheer pleasure of discovering another dialogue involving Achilles and the Tortoise.

I find it hard to define the set of people who would enjoy this book, but it would be a large and varied one.

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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Serious Thinking about Thinking. October 16, 1997
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Douglas Hofstadter is obsessed with the meaning of meaning and has been thinking about thinking for most of his life. His first book won a Pulitzer Prize, but for those of us who share his obsession with thought, meaning, pattern, and creativity, this one is even better.

The words in this book could be read in a week. The concepts Hofstadter explores will keep your mind busy for months. You will find yourself reading for fifteen minutes, and then thinking and speculating for hours. I have never seen a book that does so much to spark the creativity and curiosity of the reader.

The focus of the book is broad, almost maddeningly so -- Hofstadter jumps from Art to Logic to Science to Pattern with a speed and grace that leaves most people gasping. But as you read it, you will begin to see a common thread -- It is about how people think, and what the fundamental processes of thought and creativity might be, explored through as many manifestations of thought and creativity as Hofstadter can manage. And Hofstadter, lucky for us, can manage quite a lot.

If you are interested in thought and creativity, in mind, soul, and pattern -- if "effing the ineffable" is one of your hobbies, as it is mine -- and you are going to buy one book this decade, then buy this one.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Douglas Hoefstdtler at his best
A collection of the Metamagical themas column form Scientific American with responses, additions and some articles never published. Something for everybody. Read more
Published 1 month ago by M. Easterbrook
5.0 out of 5 stars Hofstadter Sparkes!
Hofstadter first wrote "Godel, Escher, and Bach", a magnum opus right out of the starting gate, followed up by the collection of essays in "The Mind's 'I'" that,... Read more
Published 2 months ago by J. M. Buccigross
5.0 out of 5 stars A great collection of thought provoking articles
A must read to anyone interested in questions about what is intelligence, life, and society...
Some are more difficult to follow, but generally, it's written so anyone can... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Pelican
5.0 out of 5 stars Not yet finished, but...
This book seemed menacing when I picked it up for the first time. Its cover is complex and bears a striking resemblance to a great number of occult and metaphysical classics. Read more
Published on February 2, 2008 by J. A. Leuthold
2.0 out of 5 stars One trick pony
Before I begin, I want to first point that I gave Douglas Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach which won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize, five stars. Read more
Published on August 2, 2007 by Steve Reina
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and Thought Provoking
This collection of Hofstadter's columns from Scientific American provides wonderful reading.

One of the gems is his simple, but brilliant analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Read more

Published on April 20, 2004 by David Marcus
4.0 out of 5 stars The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
This collection of essays previously published as a column in Scientific American is very uneven. There are some true gems like he discussion of the game Nomic in which rule... Read more
Published on July 13, 2003 by Michael Greinecker
4.0 out of 5 stars Essence of Mind and Pattern
At any level of scientific comprehension, this book provides an intelligent subscription to pattern. Read more
Published on May 19, 2003 by Adam Joseph K
3.0 out of 5 stars Warning to Present-Day Readers
I liked GEB, and found it to have been a great influence in my decision to pursue computer science as a career. Much of this later book is similarly good. Read more
Published on December 11, 2002
5.0 out of 5 stars When Martin Gardner needed a replacement . . .
In the days before Scientific American changed its focus, Martin Gardner wrote the long running "Mathematical Games" column. Read more
Published on April 23, 2002 by Former Rater
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