Egbert B. Gebstadter
Encyclopedia
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
. For each Hofstadter book, there is a corresponding Gebstadter book. His name is derived from "GEB", the abbreviation for Hofstadter's first book Gödel, Escher, Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is a book by Douglas Hofstadter, described by his publishing company as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll"....
: An Eternal Golden Braid; the letters appear in his last name, permuted in his first name, and permuted again in his initials.
From Gebstadter's brief 1985 biography:
- Having spent the last several years in the Psychology Department of Pakistania University in Wiltington, Pakistania, he has recently joined the faculty of the Computer Science Department of the University of Mishuggan in Tom Treeline, Mishuggan, where he occupies the RexallRexallRexall was a chain of North American drugstores, and the name of their store-branded products. The stores, having roots in the federation of United Drug Stores starting in 1902, licensed the Rexall brand name to as many as 12,000 drug stores across the United States from 1920 to 1977...
Chair in the College of Art, Sciences, and Letters. His current research projects in IA (intelligent artifice) are called Quest-Essence, Mind-Pattern, Intellect and Studio. His focus is on deterministic sequential models of digital emotion.
The equivalent section of Hofstadter's brief 1985 biography:
- Having spent the last several years in the Computer Science Department of Indiana UniversityIndiana University BloomingtonIndiana University Bloomington is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. IU Bloomington is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Being the flagship campus, IU Bloomington is often referred to simply as IU or Indiana...
in BloomingtonBloomington, IndianaBloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 80,405 at the 2010 census....
, IndianaIndianaIndiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, he has recently joined the faculty of the PsychologyPsychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
Department of the University of MichiganUniversity of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
in Ann ArborAnn Arbor, MichiganAnn Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
, MichiganMichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, where he occupies the WalgreenWalgreenWalgreen is the anglicised form of Wahlgren, and may refer to:* Charles Rudolph Walgreen* Charles Rudolph Walgreen, Jr.* The Walgreens, aka The Walgreen Company ** Walgreens Health Services , a business unit of Walgreens...
Chair in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. His current research projects in AI (artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
) are called Seek-Whence, Letter Spirit, Copycat and Jumbo. His focus is on stochastic parallel models of analogical thought.
Most of Gebstadter's books are published by Acidic Books, a fictional publisher in Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
; this corresponds to Hofstadter's publisher Basic Books
Basic Books
Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1952 and located in New York. It publishes books in the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, science, politics, sociology, current affairs, and history.-History:...
of New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Gebstadter's first book is described in GEB as follows:
- Gebstadter, Egbert B. Copper, Silver, Gold: an Indestructible Metallic Alloy. Perth: Acidic Books, 1979. A formidable hodge-podge, turgid and confused -- yet remarkably similar to the present work. Professor Gebstadter's Shandean digressions include some excellent examples of indirect self-reference. Of particular interest is a reference in its well-annotated bibliography to an isomorphic, but imaginary, book.
(The phrase "turgid and confused" was used about the works of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
by his contemporaries.)
CSG is also referred to in the text of GEB itself as Giraffes, Elephants, Baboons: An Equatorial Grasslands Bestiary, which maintains the "GEB: An EGB" acronym. Or perhaps this is a different work by Gebstadter altogether: the evidence is incomplete.
CSG is also referred to in Aria with Diverse Variations, a dialogue in GEB. Achilles and the Tortoise are trying to remember the name of an amateur mathematician, Achilles (incorrectly) suggests "Kupfergödel" and "Silberescher", then Mr Tortoise recalls "Goldbach". Translated from German, these are "copper Gödel", "silver Escher" and "gold Bach", respectively.
Gebstadter's second book is an anthology co-edited with the Australian philosopher Denial E. Dunnett entitled The Brain's U: Phantoms and Mirror-Images of Selfless Souls, and appears in the bibliography of The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, edited by Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...
. The Gebstadter bibliography on the website for Stepford Ninniversity's "Residential Pictures in Mundanities and Artifice" gives the subtitle as Fairy Tales and Rotations on Ego and Anima. http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/egbibliography.html
Gebstadter's third book appears in the bibliography to Hofstadter's third book, Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern. This is a collection of Hofstadter's monthly columns from Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
with postscripts written specially for the book.
- Gebstadter, Egbert B. Thetamagical Memas: Seeking the Whence of Letter and Spirit. Perth: Acidic Books, 1985. A curious pot-pourri, bloated and muddled -- yet remarkably similar to the present work. This is a collection of Gebstadter's monthly rows in Literary Australian together with a few other articles, all with prescripts. Gebstadter is well known for his love of twisty analogies, such as this one (unfortunately not found in his book): "Egbert B. Gebstadter is the Egbert B. Gebstadter of indirect self-reference."
Curiously, there is no mention of Gebstadter's fourth book in Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. However, rumor has it that it is entitled Stagnant Notions and Derivative Metaphors: Anthropomorphic Models of the Mechanical Fundaments of Computation, a collection of articles on the research of Gebstadter and his colleagues at the University of Mishuggan's Stagnant Metaphors User Group. Reviewers have supposedly described it as "an eclectic jumble, distended and unfocused," and it has been suggested by some that Hofstadter's Fluid Analogies Research Group was reluctant to give recognition to the work of a rival lab which they sometimes referred to as "those SMUG copycats."
Gebstadter's fifth book is called The Graced Tone of Clément: A la louange de la mélodie des mots, and is referred to in Hofstadter's book Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. Hofstadter's book is in English despite its French title, and we may conjecture that Gebstadter's book is in French despite its English title. This is supported by the fact that this book was published not by Acidic Books but by the Éditions Noitide in Cahors, France
Cahors
Cahors is the capital of the Lot department in south-western France.Its site is dramatic being contained on three sides within an udder shaped twist in the river Lot known as a 'presqu'île' or peninsula...
.
His latest book is U Are an Odd Ball from Perth: Acidic Books, 2007, which is referenced in Hofstadter's I Am A Strange Loop.