Analogy is the core of all thinking.

This is actually the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter and People from france psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend within their new work. Hofstadter continues to be grappling using the mysteries of human being idea for over thirty years. Today, with his trademark wit and unique talent to make complex ideas vibrant, he provides partnered with Sander to place forth a highly novel perspective on cognition.

We are constantly confronted with a swirling and about Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Energy and Fireplace of Thinking intermingling multitude of ill-defined circumstances. Our brain’s job is to attempt to make sense of this unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do this? The ceaseless hail of input causes analogies galore, assisting us to pinpoint the substance of what is going on. Often this implies the spontaneous evocation of words, sometimes idioms, sometimes the triggering of nameless, long-buried recollections.

Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim, “I undressed the banana!”? Why perform people who hear a tale often blurt out, “Exactly the same thing happened to me!” when it was a completely different event? How do we understand an aggressive drivers from a split-second look 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 includes particles whenever a century of research experienced driven the ultimate toe nail in the coffin of this long-dead idea?

The answer to all these questions, of course, is analogy-making-the meat and potatoes, the core, the fuel and fire, the gist and the crux, the lifeblood as well as the wellsprings of thought. Analogy-making, definately not happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to bottom, from the littlest & most fleeting thoughts towards the most innovative scientific insights.

Like Gödel, Escher, Bach before it, Areas and Essences will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own thoughts. By plunging the listener into an extraordinary variety of multi-colored situations involving vocabulary, thought, and storage, by revealing piece by piece the continuously churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden from look at, and by discovering in them one central, invariant core-the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to past experiences-this book places forth a radical and deeply astonishing new vision from the act of considering.