Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Audiobook (Free)

Analogy is the core of most thinking.

This is actually the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter and France psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend within their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling using the mysteries of human idea for over thirty years. Right now, with his brand wit and unique talent to make complex ideas vibrant, he has partnered with Sander to place forth an extremely novel perspective on cognition.

We are constantly confronted with a swirling and about Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Gasoline and Fireplace of Thinking intermingling large number of ill-defined circumstances. Our brain’s work is to attempt to make sense of the unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do this? The ceaseless hail of insight triggers analogies galore, helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often this implies the spontaneous evocation of phrases, sometimes idioms, occasionally the triggering of nameless, long-buried thoughts.

Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim, “I undressed the banana!”? Why do people who hear a story frequently blurt out, “A similar thing happened certainly to me!” when it was a completely different event? How do we understand an aggressive drivers from a split-second glimpse in our rearview reflection? What within a friend’s remark sets off the offhand reply, “That’s just sour grapes”? What do Albert Einstein see that produced him suspect that light includes particles whenever a hundred years of research got driven the final nail in the coffin of this long-dead idea?

The answer to all these questions, obviously, is analogy-making-the meat and potatoes, the heart and soul, the fuel and fire, the gist and the crux, the lifeblood and the wellsprings of thought. Analogy-making, definately not happening at uncommon intervals, occurs whatsoever moments, defining considering from best to toe, from the littlest & most fleeting thoughts to the most innovative scientific insights.

Like Gödel, Escher, Bach before it, Areas and Essences will profoundly enrich our knowledge of our own thoughts. By plunging the listener into a fantastic variety of vibrant situations involving language, thought, and storage, by revealing piece by piece the continuously churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely concealed from watch, and by finding in them one central, invariant core-the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to former experiences-this book puts forth a radical and deeply amazing new vision of the act of thinking.