noteworthy wrote:
Navigate the mind-expanding universe of Gödel, Escher, Bach with MIT OpenCourseWare:

What do one mathematician, one artist, and one musician all have in common? Are you interested in zen Buddhism, math, fractals, logic, paradoxes, infinities, art, language, computer science, physics, music, intelligence, consciousness and unified theories? Get ready to chase me down a rabbit hole into Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach. Lectures will be a place for crazy ideas to bounce around as we try to pace our way through this enlightening tome. You will be responsible for most of the reading as lectures will consist primarily of motivating the material and encouraging discussion. I advise everyone seriously interested to buy the book, grab on and get ready for a mind-expanding voyage into higher dimensions of recursive thinking.

Check out the video lectures.

From the archive, on Hofstadter:

What do we mean when we say "I"?

Freeman Dyson:

After Gödel, mathematics was no longer a single structure tied together with a unique concept of truth, but an archipelago of structures with diverse sets of axioms and diverse notions of truth. Gödel showed that mathematics is inexhaustible. No matter which set of axioms is chosen as the foundation, birds can always find questions that those axioms cannot answer.

Dr. Nanochick on the Geek Test:

I feel truly geeky because I can think of something that should have gotten me geek points that wasn't on the list -- owning the "Real Genius" DVD and reading "Gödel, Escher, Bach."

I own the Real Genius DVD. I love it. I just bought Godel, Escher, Bach and... I can't fucking understand it and I feel stupid. Its not that its totally above me and I could never approach it. Its just that... for the same reason I've never finished Gravity's rainbow: its full time work understanding it.

So I own it. But man... I doubt I will read it within the next few years. Sheesh!

RE: Gödel, Escher, Bach: A Mental Space Odyssey