Hofstadter readings

Greetings from New York! Sorry I can't make class today, but I have finally figured out which excerpts from Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach we should read, with a quasi-schedule:

for Friday, Feb. 26:

• Introduction & Three-Part Invention (which we already read)
• Chapter I: The MU-puzzle
• Two-Part Invention
• Chapter II: Meaning and Form in Mathematics
• Contracrostipunctus
• Chapter IV: Consistency, Completeness, and Geometry

for Friday, March 4:

• Little Harmonic Labyrinth
• Chapter V: Recursive Structures and Processes
• Canon by Intervallic Augmentation
• Chapter VI: The Location of Meaning
• Crab Canon

for Friday, March 11:

• Chapter XI: Brains and Thoughts
• English French German Suite
• Chapter XVI: Self-Ref and Self-Rep
• The Magnificrab, Indeed

I would also like you to start on Mithen's The Singing Neanderthals; I will post a reading schedule for that soon. In the meantime, for the Hofstadter, the idea is to give us some interesting ideas to talk about, and possibly some food for thought as we prepare analyses and mapping schemes for sonification. So I'm not going to "quiz" you on the readings, but they are really interesting (and if you do run into the occasional boring spot it's OK to skim). We'll have a better discussion if we all read it. Have a good weekend! Next week we will finish the Art of Fugue, and start on the Hofstadter.