In a major new work from the author of Gödel Escher Bach and I Am a Strange Loop two leading
scholars argue that analogy is the basis for all human thoughtsAnalogy is the core of all
thinking. This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas
Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has
been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over thirty years. Now with his
trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid he has partnered with Sander
to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition.We are constantly faced with a swirling
and intermingling multitude of ill-defined situations. Our brain's job is to try to make sense
of this unpredictable swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do so? The ceaseless hail of
input triggers analogies galore helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often
this means the spontaneous evocation of words sometimes idioms sometimes the triggering of
nameless long-buried memories.Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim I undressed the
banana!? Why do people who hear a story often blurt out Exactly the same thing happened to me!
when it was a completely different event? How do we recognize an aggressive driver from a
split-second glance in our rearview mirror? What in a friend's remark triggers the offhand
reply That's just sour grapes? What did Albert Einstein see that made him suspect that light
consists of particles when a century of research had driven the final nail in the coffin of
that long-dead idea?The answer to all these questions of course 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 far from happening at rare intervals occurs at all
moments defining thinking from top to toe from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the
most creative scientific insights.Like Gödel Escher Bach before it Surfaces and Essences
will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own minds. By plunging the reader into an
extraordinary variety of colourful situations involving language thought and memory by
revealing bit by bit the constantly churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden
from view and by discovering in them one central invariant core the incessant unconscious
quest for strong analogical links to past experiences this book puts forth a radical and deeply
surprising new vision of the act of thinking.
