Comment by voxadam
17 hours ago
>there is indeed a huge logical error at the heart of the whole enterprise but it was not discovered until much later by Kurt Gödel.
Which leads us to our next borderline impenetrable book, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.
I read GEB cover to cover and haven’t stopped thinking about it for years. Not a brag, a nudge that it’s not impenetrable and more people should read it.
I’m working on it every day during lunch break. Good old hardcopy.
GEB is not a difficult read. It is delightful!
It is a popular science book which catches the vibe of mathematical logic in an excellent way. It is not a textbook, nor a piece of research. It's all vibes, but high-quality vibes. If you are in the right headspace it can be really inspiring!
I read it cover to cove back in the day and enjoyed it. But I'm not sure more people should read it today.
If they do and enjoy it, good for them! But many parts haven't aged all that well.
However, I can still very warmly recommend 'The Pleasures of Counting' to this very day.
What hasn't aged well? I don't think any of it is dated to any particular time period.
I had my copy signed by Prof Hofstadter; a treasure to this day. Led to a maths degree, years of organ playing classes, a career in software, and a Zen practice going on 20 years. And I'm pescatarian. I even wrote a few haiku when my babies were little. Hmm, time for another listen to a Tocatta and Fugue.
I read it on my honeymoon 25 years ago. That book sticks with you.
I thought the recommended honeymoon reading was Knuth’s _Surreal Numbers_
Are you still married?
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It's been years since I cracked open a copy, maybe I should give it another shot.
If you want to get to the meat of the issue, without the extraneous stuff, you might also tackle: Godel's Theorem Simplified.
https://www.amazon.com/Godels-Theorem-Simplified-Harry-Gensl...
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GEB was one of the books that inspired me to study math in college. It made math come to life in way that my high school courses didn't.
I showed up to first day at university and an older student talked to me for like two minutes before declaring that I needed to read GEB. I dutifully went ahead and bought it, and I still work in logic today.
I'm surprised to hear that that was your perspective! I felt that it dealt with otherwise-opaque topics in a very approachable way.
To each their own, I read GEB several times and enjoyed the intellectual challenge and the humour.
Hofstadter wrote a followup book: I am a strange loop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
He wrote a number of follow-up books. I love GEB, but the follow ups were often disappointing in surprising ways.
He has another book about the beauty and challenges of translating poetry, but it’s actually about the sudden death of his wife and it's been too sad for me to finish.
> Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.
I gave that book to my mathematician grandma, and she found it so boring she couldn’t finish it - “All this stuff was known for decades”. True anecdote.
Well, it's a pop-sci tome, not a research article.
However, it is pretty dated these days.
How is it dated?
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My brother's favorite book in 6th grade was Godel, Escher, Bach.
Why, yes, he works as a compiler engineer.
Eh, that's just a pop-science tome. Nothing impenetrable about it.
I'd have thought so too, but when I went looking for a copy in Waterstones and failed to find it under popsci section, or in maths, I tried the enquiry desk.
After a few attempts where I eventually tried "goddle s-chair batch" we found it.
It was under Western Philosophy.