Book Description
Argues that the key to understanding ourselves and consciousness is the "strange loop," a special kind of abstract feedback loop that inhabits the brain.
Author : Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher : Basic Books (AZ)
Page : 537 pages
File Size : 36,73 MB
Release : 2007-03-27
Category : Science
ISBN : 0465030785
Argues that the key to understanding ourselves and consciousness is the "strange loop," a special kind of abstract feedback loop that inhabits the brain.
Author : Liz Harmer
Publisher : Knopf Canada
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 30,18 MB
Release : 2023-01-31
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0345811291
A propulsive, darkly gripping novel about the power and paradoxes of human longing, faith, trauma and taboo, from the acclaimed author of The Amateurs, shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award. A fractured portrait of a darkly riveting sibling relationship from the inside out, Strange Loops is an electrifying, intelligent and emotionally charged second novel from an award-winning young literary star on the rise. Francine and her twin brother Philip share a powerful bond in childhood that fades as they became young adults. When Philip unexpectedly becomes intensely religious, his sister decides to join his Christian youth group and soon becomes infatuated with the youth pastor. Obsessed by this transgression and what he sees as his sister's moral impropriety, Philip eventually uncovers a dark secret that threatens to shatter his faith and estranges the two siblings for decades. Later, as an adult, even as the storm clouds of resentment and mutual betrayal between her and her brother still churn around them, Francine finds herself both stirred and alienated by her attraction to an ex-student who has recently reappeared in her life, making her feel caught in a condition of perpetual departure toward the same inevitable calamity. Crackling with the intensity and plot twists of a dark domestic thriller but bursting with ideas and distinguished by Harmer's penetrating eye for the messiest and most meaningful human relationships--all rendered in lean, sharp pose, Strange Loops shocks, rattles, and entertains while asking vital questions about the paradoxes that make us who we are, and probes the possibility of love outside of any will to possess or be possessed.
Author : Liz Harmer
Publisher : Vintage Canada
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 45,7 MB
Release : 2019-04-02
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0345811259
In the style of Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, Dave Eggers' The Circle: a post-apocalyptic examination of nostalgia, loss and the possibility of starting over. Allow us to introduce you to the newest product from PINA, the world's largest tech company. "Port" is a curiously irresistible device that offers the impossible: space-time travel mysteriously powered by nostalgia and longing. Step inside a Port and find yourself transported to wherever and whenever your heart desires: a bygone youth, a dreamed-of future, the fabled past. In the near-future world of Liz Harmer's extraordinary novel, Port becomes a phenomenon, but soon it is clear that many who pass through its portal won't be coming back—either unwilling to return or, more ominously, unable to do so. After a few short years, the population plummets. The grid goes down. Among those who remain is Marie, a thirtysomething artist living in a small community of Port-resistors camping out in the abandoned mansions of a former steel town. As winter approaches the group considers heading south, but Marie clings to the hope that her long lost lover will one day return to the spot where he disappeared. Meanwhile, PINA's corporate campus in California has become a cultish enclave of survivors. Brandon, the right-hand man to the mad genius who invented Port, decides to get out. He steals a car and drives north-east, where he hopes to find his missing mother. And there he meets Marie. The Amateurs is a story of rapture and romance, and an astoundingly powerful tale about what happens when technology meets desire.
Author : Marcus du Sautoy
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 106 pages
File Size : 17,86 MB
Release : 2021-06-03
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0571360742
Alone in a cube that's glowing in the darkness, X is content within its little universe of infinite thought. This solitude is disturbed by the appearance of Y, who insists on exposing X to the richness of the physical world. Each begins to long for what the other has, luring them into a strange loop.In this play for two variables, Marcus du Sautoy and Victoria Gould use mathematics and theatre to navigate the furthest reaches of our world. Through a series of surreal episodes, X and Y tackle some of life's greatest questions: where did the universe come from, does time have an end, do we have free will?I is a Strange Loop was first performed by the authors at the Barbican Pit, London, in March 2019.'I is a Strange Loop is a play that plays... with ideas, concepts, abstractions and relationships that are, usually, hidden from the sight of ordinary mortals, articulating the ineffable, incarnating the incorporeal, revealing the inconceivable... it makes us feel we know a great deal more than we do.... and is also very funny, utterly compelling and marvellously human.' Simon McBurney
Author : Alva Noë
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 31,90 MB
Release : 2015-09-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1429945257
A philosopher makes the case for thinking of works of art as tools for investigating ourselves In his new book, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.
Author : Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher : Penguin Group(CA)
Page : 832 pages
File Size : 11,86 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Art and music
ISBN : 9780140289206
'What is a self and how can a self come out of inanimate matter?' This is the riddle that drove Douglas Hofstadter to write this extraordinary book. In order to impart his original and personal view on the core mystery of human existence - our intangible sensation of 'I'-ness - Hofstadter defines the playful yet seemingly paradoxical notion of 'strange loop', and explicates this idea using analogies from many disciplines.
Author : Douglas Robinson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 16,60 MB
Release : 2021-12-16
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1501382446
One of the most exciting theories to emerge from cognitive science research over the past few decades has been Douglas Hofstadter's notion of strange loops, from Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979). Hofstadter is also an active literary translator who has written about translation, perhaps most notably in his 1997 book Le Ton Beau de Marot, where he draws on his cognitive science research. And yet he has never considered the possibility that translation might itself be a strange loop. In this book Douglas Robinson puts Hofstadter's strange-loops theory into dialogue with a series of definitive theories of translation, in the process showing just how cognitively and affectively complex an activity translation actually is.
Author : John Horgan
Publisher : Independently Published
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 29,38 MB
Release : 2019-01-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781731440488
Science journalist John Horgan presents a radical new perspective on the mind-body problem and related issues such as consciousness, free will, morality and the meaning of life. Horgan argues that science will never discover an objectively true solution to the mind-body problem because such a solution does not exist. Horgan explores his thesis by delving into the professional and personal lives of nine mind-body experts, including neuroscientist Christof Koch, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, child psychologist Alison Gopnik, complexologist Stuart Kauffman, legal scholar and psychoanalyst Elyn Saks, philosopher Owen Flanagan, novelist Rebecca Goldstein, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, and economist Deirdre McCloskey.
Author : Steph Davis
Publisher : The Mountaineers Books
Page : 185 pages
File Size : 37,22 MB
Release : 2007-03-09
Category : Travel
ISBN : 159485257X
* A collection of vivid, intimate essays and prose poetry on the universal themes of life, love, friendship, personal empowerment, and more, told through a career in climbing * 40 percent of these pieces debut here for the first time * Davis has been profiled in publications including Outside, Men's Journal, W Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. Throughout her life, Steph Davis has chosen to take risks, to trust her impulses, to make decisions based on what feels right inside -- and never look back. Studying to be a concert pianist, she quit music the day she was introduced to rock climbing. Later, she abandoned the respectability of university life and pursuit of a law degree to become a "dirtbag climber," living out of her grandmother's hand-me-down Oldsmobile sedan with Fletcher, a heeler mix dog. Today, through courage and perseverance, Davis is a high-profile athlete whose sponsors have included Patagonia, Mammut, Clif Bar, Five Ten and Cascade Designs. In High Infatuation, Davis writes on the universal themes of life, love, friendship, personal empowerment, and more, told through a career in climbing. We wait with her in the tent through weeks of rain, wind, snow, and sleet, hoping for the weather to improve in the mountains of Patagonia, then race with her up a towering rock wall of Yosemite's El Capitan in a single day. More than adventure stories, these pieces reveal Davis' soul. They draw us into her struggles with safety, independence, ambition, and compassion. By following the journey of this remarkable woman, we learn what it means to live a truly adventurous life.
Author : Catherine Hernandez
Publisher : Atria Books
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 13,7 MB
Release : 2020-12-08
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1982146028
The author of the acclaimed novel Scarborough weaves an unforgettable and timely dystopian tale about a near-future, where a queer Black performer and his allies join forces to rise up when an oppressive regime gathers those deemed “Other” into concentration camps. Set in a terrifyingly familiar near-future, with massive floods leading to rampant homelessness and devastation, a government-sanctioned regime called The Boots seizes on the opportunity to round up communities of color, the disabled, and the LGBTQ+ into labor camps. In the shadows, a new hero emerges. After he loses his livelihood as a drag queen and the love of his life, Kay joins the resistance alongside Bahadur, a transmasculine refugee, and Firuzeh, a headstrong social worker. Guiding them in the use of weapons and close-quarters combat is Beck, a rogue army officer, who helps them plan an uprising at a major televised international event. With her signature “raw yet beautiful, disturbing yet hopeful” (Booklist) prose, Catherine Hernandez creates a vision of the future that is all the more frightening because it is very possible. A cautionary tale filled with fierce and vibrant characters, Crosshairs explores the universal desire to thrive, love, and be loved for being your true self.