This is no small thing to investigate whether an identity-soul or consciousness' I '- can emerge from simple matter. From the soup of particles, a deeper level, is the human brain, ascend to a jungle of neurons and, further, to a network of abstractions we call "symbols," the more complex and momentous of which is the 'I', that strange loop in the brain where it is ultimately the physical and symbolic levels. Curiously symbols seem to hold free and have the paradoxical property of the particles to drive and not the other way around. How can it be a real mysterious abstraction like that? How do we reflect to other beings in our minds? Can they co-exist in our brains different loops of various strangers' intensity '? For questions and mysteries as they faced Douglas Hofstadter in this fascinating test of truffle anecdotes, metaphors and analogies that have made him famous ... and understandable to the layman. A style of writing essays, entertaining, provocative, committed, which, like the classics of philosophy, it gives food for thought.
