Self-Replicating Programs

Douglas Hofstadter coined the term in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach, naming the concept in honor of philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, who had made an extensive study of indirect self-reference. Quine's own paradox — "yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" — demonstrated how a sentence could reference itself without using the word "I." Hofstadter saw the same structural trick at work in programs that reproduce themselves, and the name stuck.