A fascinating argument that the mental process of analogy is the central engine of cognition by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, apparently written simultaneously in English and French. The argument itself is presented as many simple but detailed presentations of examples of thinking via analogy that are so overwhelmingly inclusive that the book is very difficult to read through. Ultimately we are stultified. Nevertheless, there are many interesting things in here (there is, after all, sooo much). I especially liked examples of the way different languages express certain thoughts, e.g. that English has specific words to divide siblings into the male and female, but in Indonesia the available words divide siblings into the elder and the younger. ( )

Unfortunately, not Godel Escher Bach 2. ( )

Could have been great. GEB was. When he uses an example he exhaustively lists every single example in the universe. EVERY TIME. EVERY EXAMPLE. It's basically a book of lists. ( )

There are two or three different books in this book, but by all apparent surfaces, it is all a single, exhaustive tome on ANALOGY.

As I read it, I was struck by how vast and careful his analysis was and how I would have REALLY loved this as a teen, being fascinated by all the variances, categories, and richness of analogies. They are a source of amusement, creativity, vast and widespread accidents, a mode and end of consciousness, and an integral aspect of math and science. What is an equal sign but an analogy? And let's not forget Einstein making thought experiments that later became provable.

Analogy is in every word we use, constraining and freeing our understanding of the world as well as tumbling it into a mass of contradictions. Only logic and careful analysis can free it, but the source of all our greatest creativity comes from it.

As a kid, and perhaps unused to all the varieties of analogy and hungry for such a careful and well-thought-out stream of reasoning, I probably would have given this a full 5 stars just for is sheer chutzpah.

As an adult, I think it went on WAY TOO LONG.

Once the great and rather obvious arguments had been made, fought over, and survived the logic grinder, I was perfectly happy to throw it on the grill and garnish my the buns of my life with thrilling mustard, spicy onions, wholesome lettuce, and timely tomatoes.

I could easily see this book fueling the understanding of our cognition or developing Artificial Intelligence. I can see it becoming a monumental if a rather pedantic tribute to obviousness. But it is obvious only because we're in the heart of it.

Or rather, I might recommend this book to aliens trying to understand us humans. Or AIs from other stars trying to get a good grip on our alien psychology.

For the general lay-reader, DESPITE it being always lightly humorous and clear, I cannot recommend this... except, perhaps, in small doses while sitting on the toilet.

But am I happy I read it? Yes. I can say I'm a complete convert to the line of logic. It aligns to my own reasoning very well. But was it often boring AF? Yes. It was that, too. ( )

I dreaded writing this review.

Douglas Hofstadter is among my favorite writers, and I usually name his 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' as my favorite book of all time. It's a gloriously fun, rambling, clever, surprising, educational, entertaining work that's easy to get lost in and hard to summarize, because it touches on a little bit of everything.

At this point I could make an easy comparison and say that 'Surfaces and Essences' is, in many ways, its polar opposite. You see, this book is far too long, dull, obvious, at times smarmy, and overall not worth your time.

The opening premise is right there in the subtitle: making analogies is the chief mechanism of human thinking and intelligence. Mental acts that don't normally get classified as analogies can, in fact, be understood better in the light of that framework. So far, so good.

What happens then is that the co-authors continue to stretch that premise over what seems like 1,000 pages. (In fact, it is only about 500.) Examples of the same sort of thing are given over and over. (Rather uninteresting examples, too; I don't think any of them would make for good party stories.) They are then dissected through pages and pages of mind-numbingly obvious, often patronizing explanation.

Through it all, chapters and sections are organized almost randomly, with no clear sense of progression or flow. I've always liked Hofstadter's micro-sections (one per page or so) complete with pun-y titles, but here, they're almost parodic. Sometimes, a new section simply continues the previous one. Other times, it changes gears and topics completely.

The writing style is very dull; the jokes are few and corny, the endless clarifications tiring, the tone needlessly argumentative. At one point, the authors complain about "why do so many people refuse to believe that analogy and categorization are the same thing." Really? I've never in my life heard anyone refuse to believe this, let alone "so many people". You probably haven't either. You and I simply haven't given the matter much thought prior to this book. I'm sure the authors have heard this complaint before—they're the ones writing the book. Why drag me, a willful reader, into this fight?

One of the ironies here is that the authors frequently mention just how remarkable it is that we find everyday analogies so unremarkable: we get them instantly, even when the mental work required to unpack them seems significant. But then, why spend so much of this book unpacking them? It simply doesn't seem like a good use of anyone's time to "explain" why we sometimes say things like "turn off the window" instead of "close the window". We all get it; that's kind of the point here. And while being strict and methodical about *one* of these examples is maybe a good starting point for the argument, Hofstadter & Sander just continue to do it over and over and over.

It then comes as a splash of cold water when the final chapters get extremely technical, cavalierly explaining rather advanced concepts from mathematics and physics; not so much to educate the reader about those concepts, but to use them as further examples of thinking as analogy. While I'm not a scientist of any sort, I consider myself fairly well versed in popular science, at least. I can follow most well-written accounts of scientific principles. Since I couldn't really follow these, I'm tempted to diagnose them as not very well written.

The book also overpromises when it says that "analogy is the core of all thinking." That may be true, but no particular part of the book addresses the question of whether other kinds of mental processes are also important. Maybe they're really not, but it would be nice to read that the authors considered it.

Hofstadter has already covered much of this material in 'Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies', his somewhat technical overview of different AI projects he has worked on. That book was challenging, but I remember emerging from it with a number of fresh insights into computer thinking and human thinking. Similarly, Hofstadter has already talked about the challenges of translation in 'Le Ton Beau de Marot'. Both of these books were, I swear to god, breezier to get through than the few pages devoted to those same subjects here.

This should have been a 20-page paper. I hope the authors—or a more disciplined reviewer than myself—write that paper, so you can get the otherwise solid central idea of this book without all the boring padding around it. ( )