Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter

Ostensibly Hofstadter's book examines the works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M.C. Escher and composer J.S. Bach, weaving their these together to gain insight into our approaches to knowledge and how this impacts our attempts at creating and thinking about artificial intelligence.  Beyond the surface the work examines what Hofstadter terms, "Strange Loops", or alternately, "Tangled Hierarchies"; approaching the question of how we often seem to end up right back where we started?

The book brings together a multiplicity of disciplines and traditions to try for a better understanding of the relationship between the inanimate, lower-levels of human brain function and the cognitions which arise therein.  In essence Hofstadter speaks of the "hardware" of the brain - its physical constituent parts - and the "software" - that which is changeable, grouped and malleable to the world around us.

Of course this is a lot to tackle, but Hofstadter succeeds admirable (he was awarded the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for the work).  Throughout he clearly interweaves mathematics, zen, molecular biology, classical music, art and logic (to name a few) in hopes of more clearly explicating how people experience the world around us and how we differentiate that across numerous levels of understanding.  Of crucial importance to him is at what level we examine phenomena and what of them we expect?

This book is long, at times layered in obscurities of the most abstract of mathematics, occasionally redundant and perhaps a bit too long-winded.  It is also incredibly insightful and a true journey of the mind and, perhaps, even the spirit.  I already consider it one of the more insightful and instructive works I've been able to read carefully, and even understand some of.  I look forward to turning its lessons over in my mind for years to come.