& FREE Returns

FREE delivery Sunday, January 9

Or fastest delivery Friday, January 7. Order within 3 hrs 39 mins

In Stock.

As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app. Want to listen? Try Audible.

$$35.00 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

FREE delivery Wednesday, January 12

Used: Like New | Details

Sold by ONCE-OVER

Fulfilled by Amazon

Share <Embed>

Other Sellers on Amazon

$31.45
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: TheWorldShopUSA

$30.31
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: olimpianbooks

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 3 images

Follow the Author

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Hardcover – April 23, 2013

by Douglas R Hofstadter (Author), Emmanuel Sander (Author)

129 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$23.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$35.00

$24.27

$7.99

Audio CD, CD, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$44.98

—

Enhance your purchase

Analogy is the core of all thinking.

This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize -- winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over thirty years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition.

We are constantly faced with a swirling and intermingling multitude of ill-defined situations. Our brain's job is to try to make sense of this unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do so? The ceaseless hail of input triggers analogies galore, helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often this means the spontaneous evocation of words, sometimes idioms, sometimes the triggering of nameless, long-buried memories.

Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim, "I undressed the banana!"? Why do people who hear a story often blurt out, "Exactly the same thing happened to me!" when it was a completely different event? How do we recognize an aggressive driver from a split-second glance in our rearview mirror? What in a friend's remark triggers the offhand reply, "That's just sour grapes"? What did Albert Einstein see that made him suspect that light consists of particles when a century of research had driven the final nail in the coffin of that long-dead idea?

The answer to all these questions, of course, is analogy-making -- the meat and potatoes, the heart and soul, the fuel and fire, the gist and the crux, the lifeblood and the wellsprings of thought. Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights.

Like GÃ¶, Escher, Bach before it, Surfaces and Essences will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own minds. By plunging the reader into an extraordinary variety of colorful situations involving language, thought, and memory, by revealing bit by bit the constantly churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden from view, and by discovering in them one central, invariant core -- the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to past experiences -- this book puts forth a radical and deeply surprising new vision of the act of thinking.

Print length

592 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Basic Books
Publication date

April 23, 2013
Grade level

11 and up
Reading age

13 years and up
Dimensions

7.88 x 1.88 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

0465018475
ISBN-13

978-0465018475
See all details

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Douglas R Hofstadter
1,463
Paperback
in Machine Theory
133 offers from $6.23
Douglas R Hofstadter
498
Paperback
63 offers from $4.18
Douglas R Hofstadter
50
Paperback
46 offers from $2.75
Douglas R Hofstadter
111
Paperback
37 offers from $7.50
George Lakoff
599
Paperback
132 offers from $3.81
Douglas R Hofstadter
70
Paperback
30 offers from $7.68

More items to explore

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Ernest Nagel
218
Paperback
68 offers from $4.53
Douglas R Hofstadter
86
Paperback
40 offers from $5.48
Douglas R Hofstadter
498
Paperback
63 offers from $4.18
Douglas R Hofstadter
1,463
Paperback
in Machine Theory
133 offers from $6.23
Douglas R Hofstadter
111
Paperback
37 offers from $7.50
Daniel C. Dennett
412
Paperback
141 offers from $2.01

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In what Einstein cherished as the “happiest thought” of his life, Hofstadter and Sander discern a mental process that empowers the mind not just of the rare genius but also of the ordinary person. That process—the framing of analogies—received favorable attention from Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Nietzsche. But many modern empiricists, including Hobbes and Locke, have warned against analogies as intellectual snares. And many tunnel-visioned students see in analogical thinking only the logic-chopping of an IQ test. Hofstadter and Sander tear through the misperceptions, demonstrating the astonishing conceptual power of analogies—manifest when mathematicians venture from real to imaginary numbers, when physicists leap from photons to vector bosons. That power shows up in unexpectedly ubiquitous, ordinary ways, though, as we meet everyday challenges by categorizing the features of those challenges and by dredging up forgotten but relevant past experiences to interpret them. Surprisingly, only analogies enable us to recognize deep essences behind surface appearances and to weigh competing options in national policy or personal life. Readers do confront the risks of false and stereotypical analogies, but soon realize that analogy-making is the pilot light of creativity—and essential for adapting to a changing world. A revelatory foray into the dynamics of the mind. --Bryce Christensen

Review

Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“How do we know what we know? How do we know at all? With an enjoyable blend of hard science and good storytelling, Hofstadter and French psychologist Sander tackle these most elusive of philosophical matters.... [I]t's worth sticking with [Hofstadter's] long argument, full of up-to-date cognitive science and, at the end, a beguiling look at how the theory of relativity owes to analogy.... First rate popular science: difficult but rewarding.”

Melanie Mitchell, Professor of Computer Science, Portland State University, and author of Complexity: A Guided Tour
“Hofstadter and Sander's book is a wonderful and insightful account of the role of analogy in cognition. Immensely enjoyable, with a plethora of fascinating examples and anecdotes, this book will make you understand your own thought processes in a wholly new way. It's analogy all the way down!”

Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and The Stuff of Thought
“I am one of those cognitive scientists who believe that analogy is a key to explaining human intelligence. This magnum opus by Douglas Hofstadter, who has reflected on the nature of analogy for decades, and Emmanuel Sander, is a milestone in our understanding of human thought, filled with insights and new ideas.”

Gerald Holton, Professor of Physics and History of Science, Emeritus, Harvard University
“Hofstadter and Sander's book starts with two audacious goals: to show that none of us can think a minute without using a variety of analogies, and that becoming aware of this fact can help us think more clearly. Then, patiently and with humor, the authors prove their claims across the whole spectrum, from everyday conversation to scientific thought processes, even that of Einstein.”

Nancy J. Nersessian, Professor of Cognitive Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, and author of Creating Scientific Concepts
“Placing analogy at the core of cognition Hofstadter and Sander provide a persuasive answer to the question ‘what is thought?' Analogy is the mechanism underlying the myriad instances of concept formation and categorization we perform throughout any day, whether unconscious or explicit, without which there would be no thought. They mount a compelling case through analysis of a wealth of insightful—imaginative and real—exemplars, from everyday thinking to the highest achievements of the human mind, which are sure to persuade a broad range of readers.”

Longlisted for the 2014 PEN / E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

Science
“Surfaces and Essences warrants a place alongside Gödel, Escher, Bach and major recent treatments of human cognition. Analogy is not the endpoint of understanding, but its indispensable beginning.”

Nature
“Lucid and, page for page, a delight to read.... [Surfaces and Essences contains] gems of insight.”

Wall Street Journal
"Clear, lively, and personal."

Globe and Mail (Canada)
“Knowing what makes a duck a bird and what makes a plane not a bird may not seem like very profound mental feats—but Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander see such cognitive connections as part of an extraordinarily profound process.... Be prepared to become hyper-conscious of the myriad of analogies one makes every moment of every day.... The end result is a book that is ambitious and provocative.”

Booklist, starred review
“A revelatory foray into the dynamics of the mind.”

Library Journal
“Like Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning Godel, Escher, Bach, this work executes, from a very complex thesis, an understanding by general readers while also appealing to specialists in philosophy of mind and cognitive science.”

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 1st edition (April 23, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465018475
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465018475
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 11 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.88 x 1.88 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #156,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #148 in Philosophy of Logic & Language
- #337 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy
- #891 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)

Customer Reviews:
129 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Douglas R Hofstadter

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American professor of cognitive science whose research focuses on the sense of "I", consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. He is best known for his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, first published in 1979. It won both the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and a National Book Award (at that time called The American Book Award) for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Customer reviews

5 star		65%
4 star		14%
3 star		10%
2 star		6%
1 star		5%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

A tough but worthwhile read

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

This book is fairly thick, but more than that, it's 530 pages are *dense*.

Douglas Hofstadter, of course, is the author of GODEL ESCHER BACH and other fine meditations on the nature of mind and thought. In this collaboration with French cognitive scientist Emmanuel Sander, they propose, quite seriously and with a great deal of supporting evidence, examples, and argumentation, that the basic nature of thought - its "fuel and fire," as the subtitle would have it - is _analogy_.

Summarized in my own words, the conception might go something like this:

As babies, we have no knowledge about the world, but we have a powerful instinct to try and "make sense of" our experiences. We notice certain _patterns_ -- this experience _is like_ that experience -- and begin to build a sort of vocabulary of phenomena in our brainminds. Things that _are like_ each other become _categories_ (that's right, categories are the children of analogies), and, as we have more categories and fit more things into them, our experiences seem to make more "sense."

We build a category of causes and effects - babies discover gravity by dropping things - and one of the effects we find is response to our vocalizations. Speech begins with words like "ma ma." We make this sound and our mother responds, usually in a way we find pleasurable. We make it more often, and associate it with that person. Eventually it becomes, for us, a name for that person. Later we discover that other children have mommies too, and the concept of "mama" expands to a category with multiple examples, but one unique example which is *our* mommy.

To think about a thing is to consider it like other things. If we look at an object and call it a "table," we are saying it is _like_, in some fundamental and useful way, other things that have been called tables in our past experience.

Hofstadter and Sander say all this better, at greater length, and with much more elaboration - plus, they say a great deal more - than this brief review can do. But that's the gist of it: analogies create categories, and analogies/categories are how we perceive the world.

One important thing to understand is that "category," for the authors, is much more than "groups of concrete objects." There are abstract categories - for example, situations for which the phrase "buying a pig in a poke" is applicable. The pig is analogical, obviously; less obviously, it names a category of situations that might otherwise seem very unlike each other. "Buying a pig in a poke" might serve as a name for the category of "situations in which one makes a commitment without knowing whether what we will get in return is really worth it."

The book ends with a sort of Platonic dialogue on the analogy nature of categories -- which itself ends in a slightly surreal twist.

I can recommend this to anyone who thinks they can handle it. I'm not sure I could, but I did anyway.

35 people found this helpful

Helpful

R&R's Daddy

" the argument is easily made in a short book

Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2016

Verified Purchase

Yes, it's long. If one wants to argue that "some X are Y," the argument is easily made in a short book. If, on the other hand, one wants to argue that "ALL X are Y," it takes a few more pages. Hofstadter and Sandler not only need lots of examples to make their point, they also need to think of reasonable counterarguments to their thesis and address those. The book is not only fascinating, it's of real practical use. Much of my job requires explaining things to people, and I've found that each time I read it I become better at making analogies and finding the appropriate level of abstraction for an effective explanation. I'm about to read it a third time.

39 people found this helpful

Helpful

WhoAmI

A hammer sees everything as a nail

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2019

Verified Purchase

Firstly, you don't need nearly 600 pages to make the point. Secondly, more important than analogies is what makes an analogy right or wrong or what makes one work and what doesn't. To say all thinking analogical doesn't really help, does it?

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

David C. Hay

A profound book.

Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2013

Verified Purchase

This was a very thought-provoking book for someone who is in the business of trying to identify the underlying simplicity in an apparently complex business situation.

My profession is doing a kind of “data modeling”, where it is my job to identify the underlying simplicity in an otherwise chaotic environment. Back in 1995, I wrote a book Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought, which was the first to use data modeling to represent the underlying simplicity of a typical company. What these guys were writing about is what my job is all about.

But of course many people aren't aware of the fact that they are also doing the same thing every day, and have been doing so all their lives. From the point when, as a baby each of us discovers that this person called “Mom” is actually similar to that other person that his friend calls “Mom”, we continue to try to make sense out of the world by organizing what we see into categories.

At one level, this is trivial—it is what we do every day in order to cope with traffic, copying machines, and social situations. The problem is that, to the extent that our categories are not broad enough—the analogies are not abstract enough—the stuff that we have to deal with in terms of those categories can be incredibly complicated. More general categories yet are still required. .
The authors take great pains to make the point that defining categories is really nothing other than drawing analogies: An analogy is the recognition that two things that appear to be quite different are really the same thing.

A lot of the book is about the entertaining analogies that we all take on: an animal heart is a “pump”; creating a work of art is like “giving birth”, and so on. Our language is not as much composed of real descriptions of things as it is expressions that are analogies, likening them to other things.

The point is that when we constrain ourselves to the analogies (that is, categories) we grew up with, the world becomes a very complicated place. More analogies, bringing together things we never thought about being the same—that is the path to simplifying your life.

The end of the book points out that the only difference between geniuses and the rest of us is the level at which they are developing analogies. Great mathematicians, for example, are not clever by virtue of the fact that they are good at manipulating formulae. Rather, they are first clever—good at spotting analogies that no one else does. In some cases, they then use mathematics to express that brilliance. But the mathematics is not the source of the insight.

The authors take the last chapter to describe analogical leaps taken over the history of science. One example is recognizing that a cure for knee pain might also apply to elbows (horizontal analogy). Or it could apply to any joints (vertical analogy).
Because they are describing the analogical thinking he went through, not his mathematics, the authors’ description of Einstein’s recognizing that E=mc<squared>, and that acceleration is the same thing as gravity, is actually understandable.

Hofstadter and Sander, early in the book defined “intelligence” to mean “the ability to see the essence of a situation at a glance”.
This is a very profound book. But you have to be able to see that…

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jeremy S. Keens

made the argument more strongly and be a better book. Definitely don't start

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2015

Verified Purchase

I have read GEB at least 4 times, and have read all DH's other books (Le Ton Beau twice). Always a stretchfor the mind, this one was quite a slog to get through. It is built on what seems to me a simple and obvious premise - that consciousness and creativity are built from analogy. But the superstructure built onto this means that the same points seem to be being made over and over with an inordinate number of examples, instances etc. I think it could be slimmed down to a volume half the size, made the argument more strongly and be a better book.

Definitely don't start here

17 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Bart Barnard

Too much for too little

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 1, 2014

Verified Purchase

I wish I could say I was a big fan of Hofstadter. His Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid was one of the first real books I read and put me on the path of philosophy and computer science, his work with Dennet has been a guide throughout my study years, and his Le Ton Beau De Marot is one of the best books on translation that I know of. However, this latest tome (which at almost six hundred pages one is justified in calling it) does not live up to the standard that Hofstadter has set for himself.

The premise of this book is that analogy (metaphors) are at the core of all thinking. As is usual with Hofstadter's work, this premise is tested and demonstrated using linguistics and introspection. Giving examples of the way people communicate, and thereby often misinterpret one another, Hofstadter and Sander show that most if not all language-usage depend on the mutual understanding of analogies. Those analogies in itself are fluid, so that concept-building is an organic process which is in itself influenced by analogy.

Though interesting in itself, the book could have been at least half its size shorter, had not the authors decided to come up with example after example of the point they are trying to make at a specific place. On nearly every page we see examples of situations that are, in the end, not all the difficult to understand or recognise. And those examples are in themselves more often than not described with too much (unnecessary) detail.

In fact, the book they should have come up with would be not that much different from Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By (1980). Given the fact that on page 63 they actually refer to this work, it is obvious that they know about it. It is at least strange that Hofstadter and Sander do not give more credit where credit is due.

14 people found this helpful

Minimum effort

Quality supplier

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

Arrived earlier than expected. Great condition too. I love his easy to read style. Bought for MA dissertation research.

Markus aus Mainz

Analogien über Analogien

Reviewed in Germany on October 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

500 Seiten über ein Thema in dessen Kern es um Reduktion geht? Hat sich da Douglas Hofstadter, der Meister der Metabeziehung, etwa einen Scherz erlaubt?

Einem Menschen die Rolle der Analogie in seinem Denken bewusst zu machen ist wie einem Fisch etwas über Wasser erzählen zu wollen, die Schwierigkeit dabei liegt in der Selbstverständlichkeit. Wie bringt man ihm also das Thema Analogien näher? Natürlich durch Analogien!

So erklären sich auch die 500 Seiten, denn Analogien zu den Facetten der Analogie gibt es reichlich, vorwiegend durch Beispiele aus den Bereichen Alltag, Sprache, Bildung und auch Naturwissenschaft. Die Brücke ins professionelle Engineering und Business schlagen die Autoren wohl bewusst nicht. Jedes Beispiel für sich genommen ist ein gut aufgebautes originelles Lesevergnügen, welches die jeweiligen Aspekte des Themas Analogie treffsicher veranschaulicht. Das Buch zielt dabei nicht auf eine wissenschaftlich strenge Behandlung, sondern auf das Verständnis für Jedermann.

Man muss das Buch nicht von Vorne nach Hinten Lesen, sollte man auch nicht, denn die beleuchteten Aspekte werden häufig episch breit ausgewalzt. Kürzere oder speziellere Lesepfade werden leider nicht angeboten (z.B. Prolog + Kapitel 4). Das Problem des Werkes ist somit nicht die 500 seitige Masse, sondern die mangelnde Struktur. Wie wir aber in Kapitel 4 lernen, ist es jedoch gerade die Fähigkeit zur Strukturierung seines Fachgebietes die den Experten ausmacht. Da ist den Autoren dann also doch ein Metascherz gelungen – oder wohl eher unterlaufen – der die Freude beim Lesen leider merklich dämpft.

13 people found this helpful

Translate review to English

Desert

A very insightful book about the processes in the mind

Reviewed in France on November 11, 2020

Verified Purchase

Almost 600 pages to show at great length the use of analogies in the human brain. Hofstadter and Sander have written a book with two complete versions, one in English and one in French. The two languages enrich each other for the thesis of this book. Hofstadter and Sander present a very thorough case with lots of amazing examples of analogies, at different levels of understanding. We are taken through that effortlessly. We can thus spot when and where writers, presenters use analogies and to what purpose (pervasively). The link to irony and humor is not developed. It could have been an interesting avenue. Finally, the authors make it as if only analogies are the engines of the mind. I think that model-building which makes us anticipate our every action is at least one possible complement to that very convincing theory. Entertaining throughout. An example, page 95, we get a whole list of idioms: just amazing.

stephan.mentens

De moeite waard

Reviewed in Germany on February 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

Extreem interessant...

Translate review to English

See all reviews