Upward levels (Hofstadter)

In every intellectual field that I had encountered, ranging from mathematics to music to art to poetry, I had the sense that the moment that patterns were perceived at one level, this immediately established a higher level of abstraction, opening the door to the perception of totally unanticipated types of patterns.  At least in principle, there was no limit to the number of upward levels one could reach.

Douglas R. Hofstadter, Le Ton beau de Marot