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 Cézanne 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47565 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

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

From Publishers Weekly
With impressively clear prose, Lehrer explores the oft-overlooked places in literary history where novelists, poets and the occasional cookbook writer predicted scientific breakthroughs with their artistic insights. The 25-year-old Columbia graduate draws from his diverse background in lab work, science writing and fine cuisine to explain how Cézanne anticipated breakthroughs in the understanding of human sight, how Walt Whitman intuited the biological basis of thoughts and, in the title essay, how Proust penetrated the mysteries of memory by immersing himself in childhood recollections. Lehrer's writing peaks in the essay about Auguste Escoffier, the chef who essentially invented modern French cooking. The author's obvious zeal for the subject of food preparation leads him into enjoyable discussions of the creation of MSG and the decidedly unappetizing history of 18th- and 19th-century culinary arts. Occasionally, the science prose risks becoming exceedingly dry (as in the enthusiastic section detailing the work of Lehrer's former employer, neuroscientist Kausik Si), but the hard science is usually tempered by Lehrer's deft way with anecdote and example. Most importantly, this collection comes close to exemplifying Lehrer's stated goal of creating a unified third culture in which science and literature can co-exist as peaceful, complementary equals. 21 b&w illus. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Jonah Lehrer, a Rhodes scholar working in the lab of a Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist, was participating in experiments on the nature of memory while reading Proust’s Swann’s Way. He was amazed to find that the author had predicted his scientific findings nearly a century earlier. This epiphany inspired Lehrer to reexamine other great works of art. This highly readable book generally engaged and enlightened critics; Lehrer writes competently despite his "graduate-student earnestness" (Cleveland Plain Dealer). A few critics felt that some conclusions were strained and some generalizations did a disservice to the very fields they were meant to illuminate; however, most considered Lehrer’s arguments compelling and persuasive. If not all critics bought Lehrer’s claims, his book nonetheless "marks the arrival of an important new thinker" (Los Angeles Times).
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Refreshing
I loved it. It made me look at arts, science and philosophy through a new window. The style is engaging, clear and dynamic. I had read the thousands of pages of the "Search of the lost time" in French. Jonah Lehrer gave me a fresh perspective.

I LOVED IT!
One of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long, long time. It really is just a feast of insight. So many unexpected connections...From Whitman's time as a nurse to Proust's writing habits to how Woolf's mental illness impacted her writing. If you are interested in art and science and how they might intersect, a great read!

Uninspiring
Its obvious that Lehrer concocted a thesis first and then did everything he could to support it, seemingly doing most of his research with blinders on. I think the best kinds of academic reads are ones that make you feel like the author arrived at his thesis organically and only after completing his research on the given topic. I didn't make it past the 5th essay.

I know my assessment may be redundant considering the already-posted 1 star reviews, but I was shocked by all of the positive reviews (I suspect some are insincere; I've been asked to do as much at a previous job), and wanted to help balance out the scales a bit.