Comment

Jan 07, 2018ChrisMcMil rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This is a very stimulating and witty discussion of meaning and intelligence (biological and artificial) from various perspectives. It primarily presents a mathematical (number theory) perspective, but the author does draw frequent parallels from the worlds of art and music, as the title suggests, as well as biology, physics and literature. It does leave me wishing for an update, since a great deal has been learned in relevant areas (biology and AI in particular) since this book was written back in 1979, and even since the new preface was written in 1999. However it still offers a brilliant and insightful analysis of intelligence, consciousness and their limits. The reader should be forewarned however, that it is 742 pages long (not counting the lengthy preface) and it does expect you to do some “math” to follow the arguments. If that is not a problem then I highly recommend this book. (I was primarily looking for insight into Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, and was not disappointed!)