It introduced me to cognition as a emergent phenomena (specially the chapter "Prelude ... Ant Fugue" [1]).

It made me think about various philosophical topics such as holism vs reductionism and syntax vs semantics, the meaning of "meaning", intelligence, cognition...

...and then absolutely blew them all with the Zen approach to life.

[1] http://themindi.blogspot.com.br/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-a...