Douglas Hofstadter | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Hofstadter in 2006 | |
| Born | Douglas Richard Hofstadter (1945-02-15)February 15, 1945 (age 80) New York City, US |
| Education | Stanford University (BS) University of Oregon (PhD) |
| Known for | Gödel, Escher, Bach I Am a Strange Loop[3] Hofstadter's butterfly Hofstadter's law |
| Spouse(s) | Carol Ann Brush (1985–1993; her death) Baofen Lin (2012–present) |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | National Book Award Pulitzer Prize Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cognitive science Philosophy of mind Artificial intelligence Physics |
| Institutions | Indiana University Stanford University University of Oregon University of Michigan |
| Thesis | The Energy Levels of Bloch Electrons in a Magnetic Field (1975) |
| Doctoral advisor | Gregory Wannier[2] |
| Doctoral students | David Chalmers Robert M. French Scott A. Jones Melanie Mitchell |
| Website | cogs.indiana.edu/.. |
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born 15 February 1945) is an American cognitive and computer scientist whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world,[3][4]consciousness, analogy-making,strange loops,ambigrams,[5][6]artificial intelligence, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 bookGödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won thePulitzer Prize for general nonfiction,[7][8] and aNational Book Award (at that time called The American Book Award) for Science.[9][note 1] His 2007 bookI Am a Strange Loop won theLos Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.[10][11][12][13]
Hofstadter was born inNew York City to future Nobel Prize-winning physicistRobert Hofstadter and Nancy Givan Hofstadter.[14] He grew up on the campus ofStanford University, where his father was a professor, and attended theInternational School of Geneva in 1958–59. He graduated withdistinction inmathematics fromStanford University in 1965, and received his PhD inphysics[2][15] from theUniversity of Oregon in 1975, where his study of theenergy levels ofBloch electrons in a magnetic field led to his discovery of thefractal known asHofstadter's butterfly.[15]
Hofstadter was initially appointed to Indiana University's computer science department faculty in 1977, and at that time he launched his research program in computer modeling of mental processes (which he called "artificial intelligence research", a label he has since dropped in favor of "cognitive science research"). In 1984, he moved to theUniversity of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was hired as a professor of psychology and was also appointed to the Walgreen Chair for the Study of Human Understanding.
In 1988, Hofstadter returned to IU as College of Arts and Sciences Professor in cognitive science and computer science. He was also appointed adjunct professor of history and philosophy of science, philosophy, comparative literature, and psychology, but has said that his involvement with most of those departments is nominal.[16][17][18]
Since 1988, Hofstadter has been the College of Arts and SciencesDistinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature atIndiana University in Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, which consists of himself and his graduate students, forming the "Fluid Analogies Research Group" (FARG).[19] In 1988, he received theIn Praise of Reason award, theCommittee for Skeptical Inquiry's highest honor.[20] In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences[21] and became a member of theAmerican Philosophical Society.[22] In 2010, he was elected a member of theRoyal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden.[23]
At the University of Michigan and Indiana University, Hofstadter andMelanie Mitchell coauthored a computational model of "high-level perception"—Copycat—and several other models of analogy-making andcognition, including the Tabletop project, co-developed withRobert M. French.[24] The Letter Spirit project, implemented by Gary McGraw and John Rehling, aims to model artistic creativity by designing stylistically uniform "gridfonts" (typefaces limited to a grid). Other more recent models include Phaeaco (implemented by Harry Foundalis) and SeqSee (Abhijit Mahabal), which model high-level perception and analogy-making in the microdomains ofBongard problems and number sequences, respectively, as well as George (Francisco Lara-Dammer), which models the processes of perception and discovery in triangle geometry.[25][26][27]
Hofstadter's thesis about consciousness, first expressed inGödel, Escher, Bach but also present in several of his later books, is that it is "an emergent consequence of seething lower-level activity in the brain."[citation needed] InGödel, Escher, Bach he draws an analogy between the social organization of a colony of ants and the mind seen as a coherent "colony" of neurons. In particular, Hofstadter claims that our sense of having (or being) an "I" comes from the abstract pattern he terms a "strange loop", an abstract cousin of such concrete phenomena asaudio andvideo feedback that Hofstadter has defined as "a level-crossing feedback loop". The prototypical example of a strange loop is the self-referential structure at the core ofGödel's incompleteness theorems. Hofstadter's 2007 bookI Am a Strange Loop carries his vision of consciousness considerably further, including the idea that each human "I" is distributed over numerous brains, rather than being limited to one.[28]
In 1999, the bicentennial year of the Russian poet and writerAlexander Pushkin, Hofstadter published a verse translation of Pushkin's classic novel-in-verseEugene Onegin. He has translated other poems and two novels:La Chamade (That Mad Ache) byFrançoise Sagan, andLa Scoperta dell'Alba (The Discovery of Dawn) byWalter Veltroni, the then-head of the Partito Democratico in Italy.The Discovery of Dawn was published in 2007, andThat Mad Ache was published in 2009, bound together with Hofstadter's essay "Translator, Trader: An Essay on the Pleasantly Pervasive Paradoxes of Translation".[citation needed]Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language is a long book devoted to language and translation, especially poetry translation, and one of its leitmotifs is a set of 88 translations of "Ma Mignonne", a highly constrained poem by 16th-century French poetClément Marot. In this book, Hofstadter jokingly describes himself as "pilingual" (meaning that the sum total of the varying degrees of mastery of all the languages that he has studied comes to 3.14159 ...), as well as an "oligoglot" (someone who speaks "a few" languages).[29][30]
Hofstadter's law is "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." The law is stated inGödel, Escher, Bach.
Hofstadter coined the termambigram in 1983-1984[6][32] to define a calligraphic composition of glyphs (letters, numbers, symbols or other shapes) that can yield different meanings depending on the orientation of observation.[33][34] It is aneologism composed of the Latin prefixambi- ("both") and the Greek suffix-gram ("drawing, writing").[6]
To explain visually the numerous types of possible ambigrams, Hofstadter created many pieces with different constraints and symmetries.[35] Various university galleries have exhibited his work.[36][37]
In 1987, a book of 200 of his ambigrams, together with a long dialogue with his alter ego Egbert G. Gebstadter on ambigrams and creativity, was published in Italy.[33][38]
Hofstadter's 2025 bookAmbigrammia Between Creation and Discovery ("ABCD") presents hundreds of his hand-crafted ambigrams in English, as well as a few drawn by his friends.[39] The book is a reflection on this art form. His works of all types are presented in their historical context, with explanations of the particularities of each.[40][41]
Hofstadter's former Ph.D. students[42] include (with dissertation title):
Hofstadter has said that he feels "uncomfortable with the nerd culture that centers on computers". He admits that "a large fraction [of his audience] seems to be those who are fascinated by technology", but when it was suggested that his work "has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence" he replied that he was pleased about that, but that he himself has "no interest in computers".[43][44] In that interview he also mentioned a course he has twice given at Indiana University, in which he took a "skeptical look at a number of highly touted AI projects and overall approaches".[18] For example, upon the defeat ofGarry Kasparov byDeep Blue, he commented: "It was a watershed event, but it doesn't have to do with computers becoming intelligent."[45] Yet in his bookMetamagical Themas, he says that "in this day and age, how can anyone fascinated by creativity and beauty fail to see in computers the ultimate tool for exploring their essence?"[46]
In 1988, Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos created a docudrama about Hofstadter and his ideas,Victim of the Brain, based onThe Mind's I. It includes interviews with Hofstadter about his work.[47]
Provoked by predictions of atechnological singularity (a hypothetical moment in the future of humanity when a self-reinforcing, runaway development ofartificial intelligence causes a radical change in technology and culture), Hofstadter has both organized and participated in several public discussions of the topic. At Indiana University in 1999 he organized such a symposium, and in April 2000, he organized a larger symposium titled "Spiritual Robots" at Stanford University, in which he moderated a panel consisting ofRay Kurzweil,Hans Moravec,Kevin Kelly,Ralph Merkle,Bill Joy,Frank Drake,John Holland andJohn Koza. Hofstadter was also an invited panelist at the firstSingularity Summit, held at Stanford in May 2006. Hofstadter expressed doubt that the singularity will occur in the foreseeable future.[48][49][50][51][52][53]
In a 2023 interview, Hofstadter said that rapid progress in AI made some of his "core beliefs" about AI's limitations "collapse".[54][55] Hinting at anAI takeover, he added that human beings may soon be eclipsed by "something else that is far more intelligent and will become incomprehensible to us".[56][57]
WhenMartin Gardner retired from writing his "Mathematical Games" column forScientific American magazine, Hofstadter succeeded him in 1981–83 with a column titledMetamagical Themas (ananagram of "Mathematical Games"). An idea he introduced in one of these columns was the concept of "Reviews of This Book", a book containing nothing but cross-referenced reviews of itself that has an online implementation.[58] One of Hofstadter's columns inScientific American concerned the damaging effects of sexist language, and two chapters of his bookMetamagical Themas are devoted to that topic, one of which is a biting analogy-based satire, "A Person Paper on Purity in Language" (1985), in which the reader's presumed revulsion at racism and racist language is used as a lever to motivate an analogous revulsion at sexism and sexist language; Hofstadter published it under the pseudonym William Satire, an allusion toWilliam Safire.[59] Another column reported on the discoveries made by University of Michigan professorRobert Axelrod in his computer tournament pitting many iteratedprisoner's dilemma strategies against each other, and a follow-up column discussed a similar tournament that Hofstadter and his graduate student Marek Lugowski organized.[citation needed] The "Metamagical Themas" columns ranged over many themes, including patterns inFrédéric Chopin's piano music (particularly hisétudes), the concept ofsuperrationality (choosing to cooperate when the other party/adversary is assumed to be equally intelligent as oneself), and theself-modifying game ofNomic, based on the way the legal system modifies itself, and developed by philosopherPeter Suber.[60]
Hofstadter was married to Carol Ann Brush until her death. They met in Bloomington, and married in Ann Arbor in 1985. They had two children. Carol died in 1993 from the sudden onset of a brain tumor,glioblastoma multiforme, when their children were young. The Carol Ann Brush Hofstadter Memorial Scholarship for Bologna-bound Indiana University students was established in 1996 in her name.[61] Hofstadter's bookLe Ton beau de Marot is dedicated to their two children and its dedication reads "To M. & D., living sparks of their Mommy's soul". In 2010, Hofstadter met his second wife, Baofen Lin, in acha-cha-cha class. They married in 2012 in Bloomington.[62][63]
Hofstadter has composed pieces for piano and for piano and voice. He created an audio CD,DRH/JJ, of these compositions performed mostly by pianist Jane Jackson, with a few performed by Brian Jones, Dafna Barenboim, Gitanjali Mathur, and Hofstadter.[64]
The dedication forI Am A Strange Loop is: "To my sister Laura, who can understand, and to our sister Molly, who cannot."[65] Hofstadter explains in the preface that his younger sister Molly never developed the ability to speak or understand language.[66]
As a consequence of his attitudes about consciousness and empathy, Hofstadter became a vegetarian in his teenage years, and has remained primarily so since that time.[67][68]
In the 1982 novel2010: Odyssey Two,Arthur C. Clarke's first sequel to2001: A Space Odyssey,HAL 9000 is described by the character "Dr. Chandra" as being caught in a "Hofstadter–Möbius loop". The movie uses the term "H. Möbius loop". On 3 April 1995, Hofstadter's bookFluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought was the first book sold byAmazon.com.[69]Michael R. Jackson's musicalA Strange Loop makes reference to Hofstadter's concept and the title of his 2007 book.
The books published by Hofstadter are (the ISBNs refer to paperback editions, where available):
Hofstadter has written forewords for or edited the following books:
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