'Douglas Richard Hofstadter' (born
February 15,
1945 in
New York, New York) is an
American academic. He is best known for his book ''
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid'' (abbreviated as ''GEB'') which was published in 1979, and won the 1980
Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.
Biography
The son of
Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Robert Hofstadter, he graduated in
Mathematics at
Stanford University in 1965 and received his
Ph.D. in
Physics from the
University of Oregon in 1975. As of 2005, he is a College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science; Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology at
Indiana University, where he directs the
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition.
Hofstadter is
multilingual. In addition to
English, his
mother tongue, he also speaks
Italian and
French fluently. He spent several months in
Sweden in the mid-1960s, where he learned some
Swedish, and has also studied
Spanish,
German,
Dutch,
Mandarin, and
Polish[1]. He also speaks a "smattering" of
Russian[2], and has published a verse translation of
Pushkin's ''
Eugene Onegin''. In ''
Le Ton beau de Marot'' (written in memory of his late wife Carol) he jokingly describes himself as "''pilingual''" (conversant in
3.14159... languages) and an "''oligoglot''" (speaker of few languages).
His interests include music, themes of the
mind,
creativity,
consciousness,
self-reference,
translation, and
mathematical games. Hofstadter is also a vegetarian.
[3]
Work
At Indiana University he co-authored with
Melanie Mitchell and others, a
cognitive model of "high-level perception",
Copycat, and several other models of
analogy making and
cognition. The Copycat project has since grown into Metacat and Magnificat and has been worked on by Hofstadter and several assistants. An overview of Metacat can be found
here. Other new models based on the Copycat 'FARGitecture' include Musicat and SeqSee, which model cognition and analogy in musical and number sequence domains respectively.
When
Martin Gardner retired from writing his ''
Mathematical Games'' column for ''
Scientific American'' magazine, Hofstadter succeeded him with a column entitled ''
Metamagical Themas'' (an anagram of "Mathematical Games"). Hofstadter also invented the concept of ''Reviews of This Book'', a book containing nothing but cross-referenced reviews of itself (the idea was introduced in ''Metamagical Themas''):
Hofstadter has said that he feels "uncomfortable with the nerd culture that centers on computers."
3 He admits that "a large fraction [of his audience] seems to be those who are fascinated by technology,"
3 but when it was suggested that his work "has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence" he replied that he has "no interest in computers."
[4] In that interview he pointed to a seminar,
AI: Hope and Hype, where he took a "skeptical look at a number of highly-touted AI projects and overall approaches". For example, upon the defeat of
Kasparov by
Deep Blue, he commented that "It was a watershed event, but it doesn't have to do with computers becoming intelligent."
[1]
In 1988 Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos created a docudrama about Hofstadter and his ideas entitled "Victim of the Brain"
[2].
Published works
Books
The books published by Hofstadter are (the ISBNs refer to paperback editions, where available):
★ ''
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid'' (ISBN 0-465-02656-7)
★ ''
The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul'' (ISBN 0-553-34584-2) 1981
★ ''
Metamagical Themas'' (ISBN 0-465-04566-9) (collection of ''Scientific American'' columns)
★ ''Ambigrammi: un microcosmo ideale per lo studio della creatività'' (in Italian only)
★ ''
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies'' (ISBN 0-465-02475-0)
★ ''
Rhapsody on a Theme by Clement Marot. The Grace A. Tanner Lecture in Human Values, 1995.'' (Published 1996)
★ ''
Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language'' (ISBN 0-465-08645-4)
★ A verse translation of ''
Eugene Onegin'' by
Aleksandr Pushkin (ISBN 0-465-02094-1)
★ ''
I Am a Strange Loop'' (ISBN 0-465-03078-5) (2007)
Papers
Hofstadter wrote, among many others, the following papers:
★ "''Energy levels and wave functions of
Bloch electrons in rational and irrational magnetic fields''", ''Phys. Rev. B'' '14' (1976) 2239.
★
★ Written while he was at the
University of Oregon, this paper was enormously influential in directing further research. Hofstadter predicted that the allowed
energy level values of an
electron in this
crystal lattice, as a function of a
magnetic field applied to the system, formed a
fractal set. That is, the distribution of energy levels for large scale changes in the applied magnetic field repeat patterns seen in the small scale structure. This fractal structure is generally known as "
Hofstadter's butterfly", and has recently been confirmed in transport measurements in two-dimensional electron systems with a superimposed nano-fabricated lattice.
★ "''A non-deterministic approach to analogy, involving the Ising model of ferromagnetism''", in E. Caianiello (ed.), ''The Physics of Cognitive Processes''. Teaneck, NJ: World Scientific, 1987.
★ "''Speechstuff and thoughtstuff: Musings on the resonances created by words and phrases via the subliminal perception of their buried parts''", in Sture Allen (ed.), ''Of Thoughts and Words: The Relation between Language and Mind. Proceedings of the Nobel Symposium 92'', London/New Jersey: World Scientific Publ., 1995, 217-267.
★ "''On seeing A's and seeing As.''", ''Stanford Humanities Review'' 4,2 (1995) pp. 109-121.
★ "''Analogy as the Core of Cognition''", in
Dedre Gentner,
Keith Holyoak, and
Boicho Kokinov (eds.) ''The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science'', Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press/
Bradford Book, 2001, pp. 499-538.
★ Hofstadter also wrote over 50 papers that were published through the
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition; see
[3].
Involvement in other books
Hofstadter wrote forewords for or edited the following books:
★ ''
The Mind's I'' (co-edited with
Daniel Dennett) (ISBN 0-465-03091-2 and ISBN 0-553-01412-9)
★ '' by
Andrew Hodges. (Preface)
★ ''Gödel's Proof'' (
2002 revised edition) by
Ernest Nagel and
James R. Newman, edited by Hofstadter (ISBN 0-8147-5816-9). Hofstadter claimed the book (originally published in
1958) was highly influential to his thinking during his early years.
★ ''
Who invented the computer? The legal battle that changed computing history.'' (
2003) by Alice Rowe Burks.
★ '' by
Christof Teuscher (Editor)
★ ''
Jason Salavon: Brainstem Still Life'' (ISBN 981-05-1662-2)
2004 (Introduction)
★ ''
2004 by Al Seckel. Hofstadter wrote the foreword.
★ ''King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry'' by Siobhan Roberts, Walker and Company, 2006. Hofstadter wrote the foreword.
Miscellaneous
★ The film ''
Victim of the Brain'' was based on
The Mind's I (see above).
★ He published an audio
CD with
piano music composed by himself and performed by Jane Jackson, Brian Jones, Dafna Barenboim, Gitanjali Mathur and himself.
Students
Some of Hofstadter's former students have also become famous:
★
David Chalmers - philosopher of mind
★
Melanie Mitchell - creator of
Copycat
★
Robert French - researches analogies
Hofstadter's Law
Main articles: Hofstadter's law
In ''Gödel, Escher, Bach'', Hofstadter states the oft-cited Hofstadter's Law, a self-referencing
adage, which reads as follows:
:''It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.''
Trivia
★ In '',
Arthur C. Clarke's first sequel to '',
HAL 9000 is caught in a "Hofstadter-
Moebius loop". This is most likely a reference to Hofstadter.
★ Hofstadter is related by marriage to the evolutionary theorist
Stephen Jay Gould: Hofstadter's paternal aunt was married to Gould's maternal uncle.
★ Hofstadter's ''Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought'' was the first book sold by
Amazon.com.
[5]
★ In
Mark Z. Danielewski's novel ''
House of Leaves'' Karen Green interviews Hofstadter regarding his opinions about
The Navidson Record. The "compiler" of the book, Johnny, claims to have contacted Hofstadter "who made it very clear he'd never heard of Will Navidson, Karen Green or the house...".
★ In the
2007-
04-01 ''New York Times Magazine'', Hofstadter says of his Wikipedia entry: "I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me."
4
See also
★
Daniel Dennett
★
Platonia dilemma
★
Copycat software
★
Egbert B. Gebstadter
★
BlooP and FlooP
Notes
1. Hofstadter, Douglas R. ''Le Ton Beau de Marot.'' New York: Basic Books, 1997, pp. 16-17.
2. Hofstadter, Douglas R. ''Le Ton Beau de Marot.'' New York: Basic Books, 1997, p. 627
3. Wired interview
4. New York Times Magazine, 2007-04-01
5. Amazon.com's company timeline
External links
★
Douglas Hofstadter's home page
★
Indiana University's Douglas Hofstadter web page
★
Stanford University Presidential Lecture site dedicated to Hofstadter and his work
★
Online implementation of his ''Reviews of this Book'' idea
★
Seminar: AI: Hope and Hype
★
1988 docudrama about the ideas of Douglas Hofstadter
★
Steve Donoghue reviews ''I am a Strange Loop'' in Open Letters Monthly
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