Chapters 1-3, Fun With Sentence Structure

The first three chapters deal with the property of being self-referential, with a particular focus on language, and the various ways that language and grammar can communicate about itself. As I saw in I Am a Strange Loop, these chapters tied heavily into the idea of identity with tendrils of Godel enmeshed heavily throughout.

The first thing of import is to clear the notion that self-referentiality equates to paradox. Some sentences that make reference to themselves do espouse paradox, such as:

This sentence is false. p.7

However, this is not a universal characteristic of self-reference. For example a sentence such as:

You may quote me. p.17

speaks about itself, but does not generate a paradoxical situation in the process. The general gist of these chapters seems to be to set the stage for Godel, and get readers of Scientific American warmed up to the particular style of mental free roving that seems characteristic of Hofstadter. A more specific interpretation would be to, by comparison, associate language more closely with the self-building machinery of mathematics. The latter articles in the series of three in particular start to challenge the readers to create sentences that are viral in nature. By viral the idea is that the contents of the sentence contain instructions that allow it to generate a replica of itself. Something on the order of:

after alphabetizing, decapitalize FOR AFTER WORDS STRING FINALLY UNORDERED UPPERCASE FGPBVKXQJZ NONVOCALIC DECAPITALIZE SUBSTITUTING ALPHABETIZING, finally for nonvocalic string substituting unordered uppercase words
(p. 62-63)

The above sentence contains instructions (the lower case words) and a seed contained within it (the upper case words). When the instructions are followed on the contained seed, it results in a semi-perfect reproduction of itself. The instructions are translated perfectly, and the internal seed is preserved, but without restriction on the seed ordering (which is unnecessary due to the instruction to alphabetize). The above example is related back to DNA/RNA, which is later tackled on its own in a separate article.

Fun, fun, fun.