Analogy as the Core of Cognition

In the field of cognitive science, our own minds can only take us so far. Today on Focus, we're joined by professor and leading researcher Douglas Hofstadter, who has spent years building computer models of human thinking. Hofstadter believes that thinking is all about taking complex situations and paring them down to an essential core, making it possible for us to leap from one complex idea to another—and form surprising connections between them in the process.

Guest: Douglas Hofstadter (College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science and Adjunct Professor of History and the Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology at Indiana University; Winner of the 1980 Nonfiction Pulitzer Prize)