Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born 15 February 1945 New York City ) is an American physicist, computer scientist and cognitive scientist.

Life

Douglas Hofstadter is the son of Nobel Prize winner Robert Hofstadter. He spent his youth in Geneva, studied until 1965 at Stanford University and until 1972 at the University of Oregon, where he received his doctorate in physics in 1975.

He has two children. His wife, whom he married in 1985, died in 1993.

Hofstadter Butterfly

In 1976, he investigated the energy spectrum of electrons in two-dimensional lattice structures with an external magnetic field, which results in a self-similar fractal structure, the Hofstadter butterfly ( Hofstadter butterfly ). This was also experimentally in graphene superlattices independently by different groups ( University of Manchester, and a group High Magnetic Field Laboratory at the University of Florida ) was observed in 2013. Hofstadter described in his model Bloch electrons in magnetic fields, the force the electrons in orbits with the order determined by the magnetic field of cyclotron frequencies. The energy levels are quantized in dependence on the ratio of the cyclotron frequency of the grid parameters. In order to observe the effect, however, you either had to use very high magnetic fields or grids with very large lattice spacings ( superlattice ). The finally succeeded in 2013 with a combination of both. The superlattice created with graphene on boron nitride smooth surfaces - both had hexagonal structure and their interaction produced a kind of moiré grid.

Creation

Hofstadter had visiting professorships at the University of Regensburg and MIT and is currently a professor of cognitive science at Indiana University.

One large public Hofstadter was through his popular science book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Endless known braided band for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and the American Book Award in the category Science Hardback. The book makes reference to the mathematician Kurt Godel, the artist MC Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

In it he provides, inter alia several mathematical integer sequences with simple, recursive formation rules that became known as the Hofstadter sequences. The properties of the best known among them, the Q- sequence, could not be proven in a strict mathematical sense to this day. It is particularly known that the Q- sequence is well-defined at all points, that is, whether it stops somewhere. The representation of Q- sequence in Hofstadter's book is the first known mention of a meta- Fibonacci sequence in the literature. Also from this work comes the strange loop.

In 1981 he published together with the philosopher Daniel Dennett, The Mind's I. In 1985 Metamagical theme, a collection of articles he had published in previous years as a permanent column in Scientific American (English as Metamagikum in Scientific American ). In this section he followed Martin Gardner after with his Mathematical Games ( German Mathematical gimmicks ); Metamagical topic is an anagram of Mathematical Games.

In 1995 appeared Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought, the Hofstadter with colleagues from the fluid Analogies Research Group ( hence the word " FARGonauten " in the title of the German edition ) from the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition of Indiana University wrote.

In Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language from 1997 Hofstadter discusses the question of literary translation based on the poem À une Damoyselle malade by Clément Marot - different translations of the poem run through the book - and based on numerous other works. In particular, playing the beauty of the language, the problem of translatability of Nichtübersetzbaren and the question of how close we are to remain on the original, a major role.

In his book published in 2007, I Am a Strange Loop Hofstadter combines his thought experiments and intellectual adventure with his own life story.

Topics

Hofstadter's main theme is the question of the nature of human intelligence, knowledge, and the self. He approaches this mainly from the direction of physics, computer science, the formal mathematical logic and -. Limited extent - the physiology In the 1980s, he was one of the representatives of those scientific direction ties that bound high expectations for the subject area of Artificial Intelligence.

Hofstadter examines how relatively simple, " stupid " ingredients - can arise with the ability for self-reflection intelligent systems - such as the neurons of the human brain. To this end, he coined the term Sphexishness, for a specific behavior of a type of grave wasps ( Sphex Latin ). This is the leitmotif in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach. He warns in this regard over simplification and sheer reductionism and thinks that the solution must lie in the synthesis of holism and reductionism.

The Psi experiments by Daryl Bem writes Hofstadter, it must give a " disconnection device for Madness " ( also the title of his article on nytimes.com: "A Cutoff for Craziness "). He opposes the publication of articles that would change our understanding of the nature of the universe in principle, in scientific journals: "If any of his claims were true, then all of the bases underlying contemporary science would be toppled, and we would have to rethink everything about the nature of the universe. ... [ W] e can not lightly publish articles Whose implications Necessarily would send all of science as we know it crashing to the ground. Instead, we have to find out how Those articles are wrong. Or Perhaps we simply have to ignore them, Because there are a million crazy ideas. "

Trivia

Hofstadter has a passion for foreign languages. Besides his native English, he speaks French and Italian fluently and German pretty well.