I receive a small note from Kathryn:
Dear Lisa,
I’m reading Godel, Esher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadler right now. I read this sentence and thought of you:
“A formal system does not live in a society of other formal systems, mirroring them inside itself, and being mirrored in turn inside its friends.”
Firstly – system here means sets of symbols in/through/by which we make meaning/understand things.
Secondly – while this sentence talks about formal systems, I think I thought of the following diagram in terms of an informal system but have come to see it as a formal system because the rules haven’t changed:
Thirdly – I hope I make some sense; I’m finding this idea exciting and really helpful for understanding the reality of context…anyway take a look…
This makes me think of your thesis.
You are attempting to demonstrate that no one person or even group of people can lay claim to total understanding of anything – in this case Antarctica, and largely land. What you are trying to demonstrate is that each interaction between those who are responding to an aspect of the same physical reality helps to create a new and unique ‘place’ each time the interaction occurs. Therefore the place can never be understood as static. Which makes your use of animation to discuss the cultural phenomenon of place and space, or should I say space becoming place, absolutely necessary. The discussion would be false without the animation.
I am now doubting the corrections in the diagram! I hope that something here makes sense.
Kathryn Yeo, Dubai, 2007-12-19
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Through illustration and analysis, the book discusses how self-reference and formal rules allow systems to acquire meaning despite being made of “meaningless” elements. It also discusses what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of “meaning” itself.
Hoftstadter has emphasized that GEB is not about mathematics, art, and music but rather about how consciousness and thinking emerges from well-hidden neurological mechanisms.