How long does it take to read Gödel, Escher, Bach?
an Eternal Golden Braid
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter takes about 14 hours 15 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 14 hours 15 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1979. 777 pages, about 213,675 words.
29 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 23 hours 45 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 14 hours 15 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 8 hours 54 minutes |
The page count is the median across 30 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.
Subjects: Logics, Teoria Do Conhecimento, Artificial intelligence, Metamathematics, Symmetry, Mathematics
