fgtbell@kcl-cs.UUCP (ZNAC450) (02/11/86)
You may remember that I posted an aricle to the net a few months ago
asking for information on any courses running on the book `Godel,Escher,
Bach.' Here is a brief synopsis of the topics covered in the course
we had here,followed by the mail I received from others.Many thanks to
all who responded ; I hope you find the following information useful.
"PROGRAMMABILITY"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The course is mainly based on Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach".
To be more precise, its first 450 pages, plus a few short later sections.
We have decided to forego Typogenetics. Also the AI section overlaps
another course run by our Department.
Examinability is an interesting problem. One wonders what feelings Hofstadter
himself would have on this issue. At present our examination paper tends
to be avoiding essay questions, and seems to have no effective place for
a candidate's acquaintance with the worlds of Bach and Escher. Special
emphasis is placed on course work and on personal or small group discussion.
Course topics by theme :
Logic/Philosophy/Psychology/Sociology/Computer Science :
Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett: The Mind's Eye
Douglas Hofstadter: Metamagical Themas
figure/ground, Gestalt
holism/reductionism
David Bohm: Wholeness and the Implicate Order
growing relevance of Paradox in logic/philosophy/psychology,etc
William Quine: The Ways of Paradox
Watslawick, Beavin, Johnson: Pragmatics of Human Communication
the growing Computer Culture, "child philosophers", the Hackers
Sherry Turkle: The Second Self
Seymour Papert: Mindstorms
are there basic social priorities among the programmables?
Joe Weizenbaum: Computer Power and Human Reason
Lewis Mumford: Technics and Civilisation
Jacques Vallee: The Network Revolution
Martin Gardner: The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener
Godel and his Theorem :
Propositional Calculus in Gentzen style
Predicate Calculus in Hofstadter style (TNT)
the Hilbert Program, antagonists being not only Godel but
constructivist Brouwer
the logic of Godel's theorem as developed from "quining",
aided by Hofstadter's parallels
Ernst Nagel, James Newman: Godel's Proof
what can the theorem tell us in a wider sense today?
ed. Alan Anderson: Minds and Machines
The Programmmables :
Marvin Minsky: Computation - Finite and Infinite Machines
the pioneer originators of (hypothetical) Universal Systems:
Post, Church, Turing
Andrew Hodges: Alan Turing - The Enigma
fundamentals of Recursive Function Theory, generability contrasted with
testability for membership
Predictably Terminating program systems, Hofstadter's BlooP,
also the Kleene approach to primitive recursiveness
Escher :
his own views on his work, in particular and in general
his relationship with maths, with Bach etc.
his unique place in art history as creator of nonabstract forms
(creatures) in the Regular Division of the Plane
J.L.Locher: Escher
Magritte :
"this is not a pipe", words and reality, Wittgenstein's "language games"
Suzi Gablik: Magritte
Michel Foucault: This is not a pipe
Georges Roque: Ceci n'est pas un Magritte
Music in general :
a simple pitch/rhythm notational program for the musically illiterate
Hans Keller's analysis of musical meaning as Broken Expectations
is there a universal grammar of music?
Leonard Bernstein: Harvard Lectures
Jeremy Campbell: Grammatical Man
composed music as contrasted with folk/traditional noncomposed music
how does/should a composer's individual style relate to more
general musical evolutions?
is a composer aided by forming or being given some system of rules
or restrictions with which to operate? tonality? 12-tone?
in what sense ought performance to reflect the composer's supposed
intentions?
Deryck Cooke: The Language of Music
Leonard Meyer: Music, the Arts, and Ideas
Sebastian Bach :
Albert Schweitzer: Bach
Wilfred Mellers: Bach and the Dance of God
Malcolm Boyd: Bach
Hans David: J.S.Bach's Musical Offering
how far is Bach's music universal? globally? (Hofstadter) galactically?
his place in European musical history
characteristics of the Baroque period in music
in Germany at the time of Bach the relations of musical experience to
maths and to magic and mysticism
is Bach primarily a composer of religious music whatever that phrase
quite means?
counterpoint (listening as multiprocessing), canons, fugues
characteristics of Bach's last period, music as "sounding arithmetic"?
relation of composer to society in the time of Bach as contrasted with,
shall we say, 50 years later (Amadeus!)
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HERE FOLLOW THE TEXTS OF INFOMATIVE RESPONSES TO MY LAST ARTICLE
======================================================================
Dear Francis,
We had an undergraduate seminar on GEB at the computer-science department
of the University of Bonn (West Germany) in winter 1981/82. The 12-week
course was very successful and we had a lot of fun. Every week a chapter
of the book (together with the dialogues) was presented by a student.
The students were very engaged, we were listening to the music and had
interesting discussions. The final dialogue of the book was even presented
as a theater performance by some students. Although the book was then
not very popular in Germany (the German translation appeared this year and
became a bestseller (I thought, it would be impossible to translate the
book ! )), the number of students who wanted to attend the course exceeded
the number of available places by a factor of 2. I can highly recommend
such a course to everyone and would be very interested in getting more
details about you course.
Friedemann Mattern
==================================================================
The University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) had a philosophy
course in which one or two chapters of the book were discussed each week.
Your mark in the course was based 100% on an essay handed in at the end of the
term on any topic related to the book and approved by the prof.
It was a VERY interesting course. Approximately 2/3 of the students were
computer/math oriented. since the whole point of the course was discussion,
the prof did not prevent the discussion from going in any reasonable direction.
Mark (utzoo/dciem/nrcaero/xios/mark)
=======================================================================
In answer to your query, I have heard that the University of Waterloo has
been offering a course in Hofstadter's book, probably in the philosophy
department. If I can get hold of a calendar, I'll mail you the details.
-- Steve J. Rapaport
...watmath!watrose!sjrapaport
=====================================================================
As a recall, there was a course taught at Dartmouth that had that as
its major text. It was a seminar taught in the computer science dept.
I don't know much about it, but I had a friend in it about 2
years ago. I think it was taught only once.
DB Kay
Dartmouth College
================================================================
I know that J.F. Baldwin, Department of Engineering Mathematics,
University of Bristol, has used GEB in his courses but not for
a complete course - just as a discussion or essay topic, I think.
Fred Long,
Dept. Computer Science,
U.C.W. Aberystwyth
=================================================================
Any comments or suggestions please,by email.
Thanks,
--
---francis
King's College London Department of Computing.
( !kcl-cs!neon!fgtbell )
Long live Westfield ! [aaaargh!...stabbed in the back by a merger]