Book reviews

That Godel, Escher, Bach: has won a Pulitzer Prize for its author is as much a tribute to the taste and sophistication of the Pulitzer committee as to Professor Hofstadter. It is perhaps unusual that a work devoted in large part to pro-positional calculus and formal logic should win popular recognition, but then this is an unusual book. It combines in a strange and intricate way the history of J.S. Bach´s music, Lewis Carroll´s “Jabberwocky” (in German!), the trampe l´oeil paintings of Magritte, the French impressionist, and, of course, the weird and beautiful graphics of Maurits Escher of the title, master of the Mobius strip and relativistic viewpoints. What do these widely diverse elements have in common? Peculiarly, a great deal. And what they signify may be of immense import to the readers of Technology and Society.