Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter

“I can't help but recall, at this point, a horribly elitist but very droll remark by one of my favorite writers, the American 'critic of the seven arts', James Huneker, in his scintillating biography of Frédéric Chopin, on the subject of Chopin's étude Op. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid But then how could one count ideas? Or the number of gases comprising the atmosphere? Somewhere, if you try to look it up, you can probably fin a statement such as, “There are 17 languages in India, and 462 dialects.” There is something strange about the precise statements like that, when the concepts “language” and “dialect” are themselves fuzzy.” If you think about the question, you will probably come up with some criterion involving separation of the objects in space, and making sure each one is clearly distinguishable from all the others. Two raindrops running down a window-pane merge does one plus one make one? A cloud breaks up into two clouds -more evidence of the same? It is not at all easy to draw a sharp line between cases where what is happening could be called “addition”, and where some other word is wanted. You can easily pick holes in those slogans, showing why, for instance, using the plus-sign is inappropriate in both cases.

“People enjoy inventing slogans which violate basic arithmetic but which illustrate “deeper” truths, such as “1 and 1 make 1” (for lovers), or “1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1” (the Trinity).

Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter