Research Catalog

Title

Metamagical themas : questing for the essence of mind and pattern / Douglas R. Hofstadter.

Author

Hofstadter, Douglas R., 1945-

Publication

New York : Basic Books, c1985.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Subject

• Artificial intelligence
• Intellect
• Science > Philosophy
• Metamathematics
• Self (Philosophy)
• Amusements

Genre/Form

Essays.

Note

• "An interlocked collection of literary, scientific, and artistic studies"--Cover.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 802-819) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• pt. 1. Snags and snarls -- 1. On self-referential sentences -- 2. Self-referential sentences: a follow-up -- 3. On viral sentences and self-replicating structures -- 4. Nomic: a self-modifying game based on reflexivity in law.
• pt. 2. Sense and society -- 5. World views in collision: the "Skeptical Inquirer" versus the "National Enquirer" -- 6. On number numbness -- 7. Changes in default words and images, engendered by rising consciousness -- 8. A person paper on purity in language.
• pt. 3. Sparking and slipping -- 9. Pattern, poetry and power in the music of Frederic Chopin -- 10. Parquet deformations: a subtle, intricate art form -- 11. Stuff and nonsense -- 12. Variations on a theme as the crux of creativity -- 13. Metafont, metamathematics, and metaphysics.
• pt. 4. Structure and strangeness -- 14. Magic cubology -- 15. On crossing the rubicon -- 16. Mathematical chaos and strange attractors -- 17. Lisp: atoms and lists -- 18. Lisp: Lists and recursion -- 19. Lisp: recursion and generality -- 20. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
• pt. 5. Spirit and substrate -- 21. Review of "Alan Turing: The enigma" -- 22. A coffeehouse conversation on the Turing test -- 23. On the seeming paradox of mechanizing creativity -- 24. Analogies and roles in human and machine thinking -- 25. Who shoves whom around inside the careenium? -- 26. Waking up from the Boolean dream, or, Subcognition as computation.
• pt. 6. Selection and stability -- 27. The genetic code: arbitrary? -- 28. Undercut, flaunt, pounce, and mediocrity: psychological games with numbers -- 29. The prisoner's dilemma computer tournaments and the evolution of cooperation.
• pt. 7. Sanity and survival -- 30. Dilemmas for supperrational thinkers, leading up to a luring lottery -- 31. Irrationality is the square root of all evil -- 32. The tale of Happiton -- 33. The tumult of inner voices, or, What is the meaning of the word "I"?

ISBN

• 0465045669 (pbk.)
• 0465045405 :

LCCN

^^^83046095^

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library