An Eternal Golden Braid...

With all my talking, raving and discussing of this book, I thought it was time to share it with everyone else...

Perhaps one of the greatest books ever written, Douglas Hofstadter has created a masterpiece with Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. When you first pick this book up, you are immediately faced with its daunting 777 pages. All of them filled to the brim with scientific and technical words, diagrams, puzzles, art, mathematics, and even music. The author describes it as a "metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll." but it is really much more. Many people have come to look at this book as the relationship between science, music, mathematics and art. But more importantly, the connections between these, the symmetry involved in going from one to the other, and finally, how humans are able to do what we do.

But when you really begin to dig into it, and begin to analyze everything that is being discussed, you realize that there is more than what meets the eye. With different analogies, he builds the groundwork for how the human brain, and thinking in general, has been developed, and the many attempts that technology has made to create a human brain. With his likening of the human brain to a colony of ants, he digs even deeper than that, and looks at how DNA defines who we are. He looks at how the brain interacts with the rest of the body, and how art, music, mathematics, and just about everything around us is interlaced and how closely connected everything is.

From the worldview point of view, he avoids the creation question all together. In fact, he even mentions at the end of one of his chapters that he could discuss at great length where we came from, but he chose not to do so, but rather to leave that up to the reader. Because of this, you can interpret this book either way. He has very carefully written this book, and while I tried to figure out which side he is coming from, I was unable to decide.

So, all that being said, I highly recommend this book to everyone, regardless of your area of focus, education level, interests, or anything else. It presents many interesting ideas and theories, and it is loaded with amazing selections of art and intriguing discussions between different characters.

4 Questions

So what is a worldview? What does it do? How does it affect us? What impact does it have on the culture? What is culture? What kind of affect does the culture have on us? What defines the music we listen too, the books we read and the movies we watch? Is there any standard by which you can measure anything?

I purpose that there are 4 different questions that you can ask about anything, and the answers will give much insight into whatever it is you are talking about...

1) What led to the creation of he/she/it?

2) What do you know about he/she/it?

3) What does/do he/she/it value?

4) And finally, how has he/she/it changed our culture?

These four questions provide an excellent launching platform for further discussions as well as providing a basic understanding of whatever it is you are investigating...

First Post

So this is going to be a blog with the sole purpose of exploring, contending, fighting for, and talking about worldviews. More specifically, it will be a forum that will be used, for now, to post reviews on books, movies, music, etc. It will also be used to identify and define the worldviews that are presented in the books, movies, music, etc... We will be analyzing everything from a biblical worldview, and how other things relate to us, as christians in this fallen world.

If you have any suggestions on material that you would like analyzed, feel free to email us at biblical.perspective@gmail.com.