Daniel Fortunov's Blog » GEB Chapter 1: Strange Loops

Last weekend I started reading Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. I doubt I'll be able to review the entire thing in one go, partly because it's so massive, partly because I suspect it covers a lot of disparate topics that cannot be coherently reconciled, and partly because I doubt I'll be able to comprehend it and hold it all in my brain at the same time without my head exploding.

Instead, I'm going to present some key points and themes from each chapter as I go along, intended to get you thinking and whet your appetite for this book.

Chapter 1: Strange Loops

The actual chapter title is A Musico-Logical Offering, but a major theme is what Hofstadter calls the Strange Loop – something he warns will come up again and again, sometimes in the open, and sometimes in disguise.

The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levers of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started.

Strange Loops in Art (Escher)

M.C. Escher: A strange loop in five steps...