Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps' or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

"With a new preface by the author"--Cover. "A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll"--Cover.

GEB:A musico-logical offering -- The mu-puzzle -- Meaning and form in mathematics -- Figure and ground -- Consistency, completeness, and geometry -- Recursive structures and processes -- The location of meaning -- The propositional calculus -- Typographical number theory -- Mumon and Godel -- EGB: Levels of description and computer systems -- Brains and thoughts -- Minds and thoughts -- Bloop and floop and gloop -- On formally undecidable propositions of TNT and related systems -- Jumping out of the system -- Self-ref and self-rep -- Church, turing, tarski, and others -- Artificial intelligence: retrospects -- Artificial intelligence: prospects -- Strange loops, or tangled hierarchies.