Textual self-reference: Hofstadter | Tangente

With Douglas Hofstadter

Honor where honor is due. Hofstadter exclaims, "I hope my wish will not come true!" and states Hofstadter's law, according to which "things always take longer than expected, even when you take Hofstadter's law into account".

When asked, "Your house is on fire and you can save only one thing: what do you take?" Jean Cocteau replied, "The fire!"

Albert Einstein marvelled at the universe: "What is incomprehensible is that the world is comprehensible."

References:

• Gödel, Escher, Bach: les brins d’une guirlande éternelle. Douglas Hofstadter, Dunod, 2008.

• Ma thémagie. Douglas Hofstadter, Intereditions, 1997.

In literature

Self-referential letter games abound. "I must quickly use my thumb to press some 'a's and 'ou's into my trtes before putting them in the oven", jokes the writer Éric Chevillard. He also recalls that, "as a cruel child, \[he\] used to tear the wings off ibeues". He ventures into topology as well: "The long corridor in the psychiatric hospital opens onto a long corridor leading to a long corridor that runs straight into a long corridor, at the end of which you finally find yourself mad." Lastly, he treats us to a surreal, if not absurd, reflection: "the forensic pathologist died in turn, without knowing where, when, how or why."

Was the American comedian Groucho Marx fond of set-theoretic paradoxes when he declared, "Under no circumstances would I want to belong to a club that would accept me as a member"? Did the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung appreciate duality when he quipped, "I am schizophrenic, and so am I"? The same question might be asked of Montaigne, who wrote, "I have no more made my book than my book has made me".

Lastly, the humorist Pierre Dac treated us to this sublime arithmetical observation: "however much you change the order of the factors, the mail arrives no faster"…

The story of a sentence…

Douglas Hofstadter, once again, never stopped twisting sentences this way and that. One of his observations is that "this sentence has changed you: you cannot go back to not having read it." We also owe him such gems as "L tt rs ar m ss ng fr m th s s nt nc t b r ad pr p rly" and "Aposiopesis is the sudden breaking off of a senten".

Logic gets its turn too! For instance: "Doesn't this sentence remind you of Agatha Christie?" And what are we to make of "Alphabetical are arranged in in order sentence The this words."? It is every bit as irrefutable as "The words in this sentence are not arranged in alphabetical order." or "I am the translation literal of a sentence English."

More combinatorial—and appetizing, at least to an American—are the statements "Here is a hamburger with vowels, consonants, commas and a full stop." and "Here is a sentence with "onions," "lettuce," "tomatoes" and"some fries"". If that has whetted your appetite, consider that "this sentence contains a missed steak near the end".