I have started reading GEB. Not for the first time, but maybe, I’ll finish it for the first time this time. Read on for an up-to-date account on how far I am
Back in the eighties, when GEB came out, my father bought the book (or maybe got it as a present). At some time, probably about 10 years ago, I decided to read it, and while it struck me as brilliant, it also struck me as a bit too heavy, and I moved off to another book when I was half-way through. That decision is usually the death sentence for any of my books. Such a book can’t be picked up again easily, for where would you start? Where you left off? You’d be confused. From the beginning? You’d be put off, since it’d sound boring to you now … So the book is condemned to bookshelf limbo.
But for GEB, the 10-year pause may just do the trick. I’ll keep you updated on how far I get.
Update: March 2nd, 2004
As of today, I am still reading GEB. That means two things: First of all, I haven’t finished it yet, which is not surprising, considering that it’s about 800 pages long and not at all the kind of reading you can breeze through in a train or on a plane. Second, however, the fact that I’m still reading it means just that – I haven’t given up yet, even though the thought has crossed my mind once or twice.
In a first glance, GEB is a book all about number theory, logic, and self-referential systems. Now, admittedly, this doesn’t sound very exciting at first. Douglas R. Hofstadter, the author, however, broadens the subject considerably, linking these fundamental aspects (and what could be more fundamental than the properties of whole numbers and logical relations?) to a broad variety of topics, ranging from music and art to the self-replicating nature of DNA and to the way our mind works. This breadth and depth of the subject matter makes for a fascinating read, and keeps you hanging in there when you hit upon a stretch of pages that are not unlike my maths textbooks from university, i.e. utterly unpleasant to read.
These dull moments, of which GEB has quite a few, are nicely contrasted by the introductory preambles to each chapter. In these preambles, the author introduces the next topic in a playful and whimsical manner, sometimes in dialogues, sometimes in one-sided dialogues (one end of a phone conversation), and sometimes in more intricate forms like canons. The ever-recurring, slightly off-key, protagonists, Achilles, the bravest of all warriors, and his friends, the turtle and the crab, allow the author to introduce plently of humor, puns and mind games into a book that otherwise may have died of boredom.
GEB takes us from simple first principles to complex subject matter, explored topics include: meaning and form in mathematics, the dichotomy between figure and background, or between positive assertions and the negative assertions derived from them, consistency and completeness in a system, recursive processes, levels of description and how brains and thoughts may be represented in terms of symbols and meta-symbols, paradoxical statements, which predict their own falsehood, but only if they’re true, and many more wondrous things. Again, this is not a book that’s easy to read on a quick train ride, every page presents a certain intellectual challenge that must be pondered upon. However, don’t be alarmed, the book is not as dull as the quick overview of its topics above may make you believe.
In the introduction to the 20th anniversary edition, the author shares with us some of the toils and trials he had to go through in the making of the first edition, as he essentially typeset and printed the galleys himself, getting excellent first-hand experience about what can go wrong in the printing process. For the 20th anniversary edition, he decided that the book should come out in a form true to the original, no alterations made and nothing updated. Thus, how well has the book stood the test of time?
One item that Hofstadter mentions in his introduction, which strikes him as old-fashioned nowadays, is that almost all of the characters in GEB are male. This sexist, if you will, viewpoint seems to him as something that would offend nowadays, and which he wouldn’t have written that way. Personally, I couldn’t care less. To me, these skin-deep concessions in order not to seem sexist (alternatingly writing “he” and “she” for instance), have no deep relation to the thought that the sexes are equal. Characters in a story are just that, characters, and thus, they should have the sex that fits their character. There are, however, one or two things that I found surprising and a bit out-of-date. When Hofstadter speaks about DNA as a self-replicator, he describes its function in a idealized, mathematical way, which explicitly is not the way things are done in nature. However, later, when he describes how DNA works in real life, some of his statements are simply wrong*. I cannot tell for sure, but I believe that this is the author’s fault, not the fault of current knowledge 20 years ago. In such cases, I would be a proponent for making a change to the book, since it’s not a sign of the times that is brought up to date, but rather an author’s error that is fixed.
Another strange omission is the extremely short biography of Alan Turing, one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. His whole career in code-breaking during WWII, and thus his interest in information theory and communication systems, is omitted, likewise his suicide at young age, brought upon by his being ostracized as a homosexual, is described as “apparently (…) an accident with chemicals. Some say suicide.”. However, it could well be that the facts surrounding his secret career and his early demise were not publicly known in 1984, when the book was written.
I will write up some concluding remarks when I am finished with the book, so stay tuned …
*One wrong statement is that the distinction of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) versus RNA (ribonucleic acid) is that one of them is lacking an oxygen in the phosphate group. In reality, the oxygen is lacking in the ribose sugar. Yes, I am nitpicking… but then, I am a biologist.
