Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigS
I'll have to snoop that one out !
Add it to a list that could end up putting me into an asylum !
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Definitely get Gödel-Escher-Bach. Hofstadter does an excellent job at demystifying the incompleteness theorem while at the same time illustrating the brilliance of Gödel's proof. The theorem is surrounded by an aura of hocus-pokus and frequently gets sensationalised by pop-science media (btw, it's not claiming that formal systems are always incomplete, but that they're either incomplete or self-contradictory, the latter actually being the more interesting case). Hofstadter shows how it can be found in every-day life and that the power of self-contradiction is in fact what makes the human mind possible.
Get it, read it and witness your mind becoming cleansed. No other book has ever given me a rush like this one
Cheers
Steffen.