Proust Was a Neuroscientist - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, December 2007: Proust may have been more neurasthenic than neuroscientist, but Jonah Lehrer argues in Proust Was a Neuroscientist that he (and many of his fellow artists) made discoveries about the brain that it took science decades to catch up with (in Proust's case, that memory is a process, not a repository). Lehrer weaves back and forth between art and science in eight graceful portraits of artists (mostly writers, along with a chef, a painter, and a composer) who understood, better at times than atomizing scientists, that truth can begin with "what reality feels like." Sometimes it's the art that's most evocative in his tales, sometimes the science: Lehrer writes about them with equal ease and clarity, and with a youthful confidence that art and science, long divided, may yet be reconciled. --Tom Nissley

Product Description
In this technology-driven age, it's tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer argues in this sparkling debut, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first.

Taking a group of artists ? a painter, a poet, a chef, a composer, and a handful of novelists ? Lehrer shows how each one discovered an essential truth about the mind that science is only now rediscovering. We learn, for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory; how George Eliot discovered the brain's malleability; how the French chef Escoffier discovered umami (the fifth taste); how Cezanne worked out the subtleties of vision; and how Gertrude Stein exposed the deep structure of language ? a full half-century before the work of Noam Chomsky and other linguists. It's the ultimate tale of art trumping science.

More broadly, Lehrer shows that there's a cost to reducing everything to atoms and acronyms and genes. Measurement is not the same as understanding, and art knows this better than science does. An ingenious blend of biography, criticism, and first-rate science writing, Proust Was a Neuroscientist urges science and art to listen more closely to each other, for willing minds can combine the best of both, to brilliant effect.

Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...

2 out of 5 stars

No, he wasn't. January 24, 2008
64 out of 77 found this review helpful

When I first heard of this book, I was intrigued by the title. I just recently finished Proust's In Search of Lost Time and I've spent a good part of my career in Neuroscience. So I laughed when I saw the madeleine, the initiator of Marcel's journey of memory, on the cover. But I'm sorry to report that this is a most irritating book. Mr. Lehrer sets up his premise that these eight great artists somehow presaged later discoveries of neuroscience and then bends over backwards to prove it. Each artist/novelist/cook is subjected to egregious cherry-picking of quotes and concepts to align their work with his shallow understanding of neuro-scientific discoveries (his scientific credentials are that he worked in a neuroscience lab as a technician). He covers a lot of ground but it is at a desperate, grad-student level of scholarship. This is confirmed in his acknowledgement section where he admits to having spent a lot of time in the library - probably reading other authors' analyses of these artists. Too bad he didn't study them himself. The book is at its best when he is simply reviewing the contributions made by these giants. Their works are described enthusiastically though not thoroughly. It's like examining the Sistine Chapel with a flashlight - he misses the big picture. But when he reduces the artist's entire body of work down to fit his argument that they somehow anticipated how the brain functions, things really fall apart. Concerning the ones I know well (Proust, Cezanne, Stravinsky, and Woolf), I was startled by how idiotic his extrapolations are. No, Proust was not a neuroscientist. He was a brilliant writer who described the human condition and human behavior like no other. It's insulting to reduce his literary adventure of memory to a discussion of dendritic prions. Had he read the scene from 'Time Regained' where Marcel waits in the library, he'd know that. It is the best statement of Proust's understanding of the power of memory - and it's not mentioned in this book. The 'analysis' in this book is agenda-driven musings of a 25-year-old blogger. After eight chapters of this intellectual alchemy, his conclusion describes the artistic and scientific cultures as dysfunctional children who need to appreciate one another better ("Every humanist should read Nature." What?!) Art and Science are both important tools for exploring our world and ourselves. All human beings have the option to learn, appreciate, and participate in both. They are complementary, not mutually exclusive. But they are best appreciated within their own domain - and not force-fit into the other.

5 out of 5 stars

A fine, fine little book.... November 5, 2007
51 out of 74 found this review helpful

Don't buy this book if you're looking for some new definitive something or other regarding Proust. Marcel gets only one chapter, but what a fine chapter that is.

Buy it if you love fine writing, fine painting, haute cuisine and magnificent neuroscience.

Buy it if you have any pretensions towards being civilized.

I owe nothing to the author, who has never heard of me, and I work not in any nearby intellectual field.

I write as one who saw, who bought and who is much enjoying.

5 out of 5 stars

Ingenious, clear and well written October 30, 2007
39 out of 43 found this review helpful

I have read numerous reviews of this book, and was afraid that it would be too difficult to understand, given the title and subject matter. I was surprised to find it clearly written and definitely accessible, even without a background in either art or science. I especially enjoyed the discussion of neuroscience advances in memory research. My favorite chapter was about the chef, Escoffier. It makes sense that chefs would discover how to manipulate our taste buds long before scientists could explain why something tastes so good.

Proust was a Neuroscientist is creative and original, and helped me think about the relationship between science and art in a new way. I recommend it.

5 out of 5 stars

Not to be missed November 3, 2007
36 out of 39 found this review helpful

If you want to know how your brain works but have no desire to read a scientific treatise on the subject, then this book is for you. The premise is refined and beckoning. The name Proust in the title encouraged me to pick up the book, but perusing the jacket had me hooked. Artists as scientific validation? I had to find out how these two seemingly unique areas could be so intertwined. Reading each chapter, one must savor the full experience of what the author has written. I found taking a break between each new chapter revelation enabled me to reflect and find similar thoughts and discoveries in my own life and thoughts. This prepares you for the next disclosure. For the artist, reader and budding hedonist in you - this book will bring them all together.

1 out of 5 stars

Failed premise by an author who writes well but misunderstands science January 21, 2008
28 out of 39 found this review helpful

Mr. Lehrer had an idea - a number of writers and other artists were prophetic of the findings of modern neuroscience. This book represents his attempt to support that idea by the classic mode of cherry-picking. It proves that if one looks long and hard enough, some sort of prediction of almost anything can be wrung out of 19th and early 20th century writing or productions, whether artistic or gastronomic. Equally disquieting is the author's poor grasp of science. Consider a few of the bloopers which appear in the chapter on George Eliot. In describing Eliot's attraction to Darwin, Lehrer writes, "Here was a narrative that was itself unknowable, since it was guided by random variation. The evolution of life depended on events that had no discernible cause." Poor Darwin may be rolling over in his grave. Although I wince at the use of the word "guided" at all with respect to evolution, if used it might be vaguely associated with natural selection, not random variation. And any number of (but certainly not all) causes of natural selection have been well documented. Further on Lehrer states, "Scientific facts are meaningful precisely because they are ephemeral, because a new observation, a more honest observation, can always alter them." With this the author's purported background in science further tanks. Facts remain facts even if their interpretation changes as new hypotheses are developed to explain the new observations. Presuming that the earlier data were "honestly" collected, to be accepted the new hypothesis must also explain these older data or show that something about them makes them insufficient or not germane. And what exactly is a more honest observation? Is Lehrer impugning Newton because his data did not allow him to anticipate quantum theory?
Overall, this is a well written book with a lame thesis and containing numerous statements that will raise the hair on the back of the neck of anyone who understands science and how it is done. It illustrates that post-Modernism is alive but not well.

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