Maybe we recognize the contributions and influences of others in his work? Hofstadter is a big time guy, but he's not a self-centered egoist like Kurzweil. He'll regularly talk about the ideas he's bounced around with buddies like Daniel Dennett, etc. I see him as more of a poet than a philosopher or scientist. He is piecing together little bits of truth from many, many, different domains and showing how they reach the same conclusions. There's been nobody like him for over 50 years, so it's very difficult to draw comparisons to others, or even measure the impact of his contributions.