[−]
  • Search Digit-count Valid ISBN Invalid ISBN Valid Barcode Invalid Barcode
Share Organize Explore

has ALL you need!

A community for book lovers to create their own bookshelves, share and explore books.

Sign Up for FREE!
Blog this item

Proust Was a Neuroscientist

By Jonah Lehrer

(4)

| Hardcover | 9780618620104

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.

1 Review

  • 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.

    Is this helpful?

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

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (4)
    • 4 stars
    • 3 stars
    • 2 stars
    • 1 star
  • English Books
  • Hardcover 256 Pages
  • ISBN-10: 0618620109
  • ISBN-13: 9780618620104
  • Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
  • Pub date: Nov 01, 2007
  • Dimensions: 21 cm x 15 cm x 2 cm Just how big is that?
Improve data of this book

Prices Change currency & sellers

ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780618620104 Hardcover $24.00 $16.32 Amazon US
£14.57 £14.56 Amazon UK
$32.95 $20.76 Amazon CA