I Am a Strange Loop

I AM A STRANGE LOOP. Douglas Hofstadter. Basic Books, New York, 2007. 412 pp. Hardcover, $26.95. Hofstadter's first book-length discursion into philosophy and his interwoven passions of minds, brains, patterns, symbols, self-reference, and consciousness since his Pulitzer Prizewinning Godel, Esther, and Bach (1979).

The book is about the concept of 'T' by a cognitive scientist whose specialty is, to the degree it is a specialty, "thinking about thinking." As in his previous books, he relies heavily on analogies, metaphors, and examples ("indeed, this book is a gigantic salad bowl full of metaphors"), and he writes in the first person, all of which greatly enlivens topics too often treated in the abstract.

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