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Proust Was a Neuroscientist

By Jonah Lehrer

(11)

| Hardcover | 9780618620104

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Book Description

A gifted young writer explores the unexpected links between art and modern science. From a rising journalist and Rhodes scholar, a dazzling look at how five writers, a painter, a composer, and a chef discovered the truth about the mind. In this technology-driven age, its tempting to believe that Continue

A gifted young writer explores the unexpected links between art and modern science. From a rising journalist and Rhodes scholar, a dazzling look at how five writers, a painter, a composer, and a chef discovered the truth about the mind. In this technology-driven age, its 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 and original book, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, where the brain is concerned, art got there first. Focusing on 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 human mind that science is only now rediscovering. We learn, for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory; how George Eliot discovered the brains malleability; how the French chef Escoffier discovered umami (the fifth taste); how Cézanne worked out the subtleties of vision; and how Gertrude Stein exposed the deep structure of language a full half-century before Chomsky. Its the ultimate tale of art trumping science. More broadly, Lehrer shows that there is a cost to reducing everything to atoms and acronyms and genes. Measurement is not the same as understanding, and this is what art knows better than science. An ingenious blend of biography, criticism, and first-rate science writing, Proust Was a Neuroscientist urges science to listen more closely to art, for the right minds can combine the best of both to brilliant effect.

Critics

  • Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

    In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare wrote, Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, wherin he puts alms for oblivion. This fully accords with the discoveries of modern brain science. Proust in his famous novel, In Search of Lost Time anticipates su ... (read full critics)

    thebookbag published on Wed, 20 Apr 2011

  • Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer: review

    Jonah Lehrer is making a career of investigating human instincts and bridging the gap between what Donald Rumsfeld might call the “known knowns” and the “known unknowns” of the mind. His first book, The Decisive Moment (2009), explored when we should ... (read full critics)

    telegraph.co.uk published on Wed, 2 Mar 2011

1 Review

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  • Proust was a Neuroscientist explores the sometimes curious relationship between art and science. In each chapter, author Jonah Lehrer reveals how a particular artist—Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cézanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf ... (continue)

    Proust was a Neuroscientist explores the sometimes curious relationship between art and science. In each chapter, author Jonah Lehrer reveals how a particular artist—Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cézanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf—anticipated later discoveries by neuroscientists. Simultaneously, Lehrer considers how the artists themselves were influenced by scientific thinking at the time. Even if science isn't your cup of tea, Lehrer's insights into the artists' goals, thought processes, and influences should prove fascinating.

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    Victor B said on Aug 18, 2008 | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (11)
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  • English Books
  • Hardcover 256 Pages
  • ISBN-10: 0618620109
  • ISBN-13: 9780618620104
  • Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
  • Pub date: Nov 01, 2007
  • Dimensions: 1355 mm x 968 mm x 129 mm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Paperback, Others and eBook
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9780618620104 Hardcover $24.00 $20.52 bn.com
$24.00 $15.99 The Book Depository
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