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So Knuth wrote up treatise as a dialog between students. (I havent read it.) Hofstader uses mathe-philosophical dialogs in Goedel Escher and Bach. The Greek phi
by peter303 10y ago
So Knuth wrote up treatise as a dialog between students. (I havent read it.) Hofstader uses mathe-philosophical dialogs in Goedel Escher and Bach. The Greek philosophers like Plato and Zeno often used such dialogs. Then too Hofstader wrote his book in 1976 as a postdoc at Stanford, two years after Stanford prof Knuth published his Surreal book. Maybe there is an influence.
- VodkaHaze 10y agoI imagine it's because the dialogue format flows naturally compared to the traditional monologue paradigm in books.
- pasquinelli 10y agoseems pretty natural to put the questions you have answers to into your reader's head and then answer them.