A dazzling intellectual inquiry into the nature of truth and the relationship between art and science.
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 and original book, 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 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 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 Chomsky. It's the ultimate tale of art trumping 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 willing mind can combine the best of both to brilliant effect.
Lerner approaches some of the basics of neuroscience by examining the way writers, artists, and even a chef deal with the mind. Looking at how the arts, as well as culinary creation, present ideas, the author examines recent discoveries in the science of the brain. Discussing how we see, smell, taste, and remember, he explains how the brain interprets the input it receives from different sources. It's a disappointment that James Boles's narration is too slow, his intonation is monotonous, and his pronunciation of foreign words is often wrong. Nonetheless, Lerner's approach of using the creative arts as a springboard to look at the brain keeps this production interesting. K.M. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
Los Angeles Times...
Looked at one way, "Proust Was a Neuroscientist" is a lucid summary of the brain as seen by contemporary neuroscience; looked at again, it is an inspired interpretation of the work of eight 19th and 20th century artists and writers whose insights, Lehrer claims, anticipated our current understanding. In lesser hands, this argument would be merely tendentious, but Lehrer's command of his material is so complete that he persuasively makes his case with scientific acuity and aesthetic sensitivity.... In enlarging our understanding of eight artists while teaching us how brains work (and enlarging our understanding of brains by teaching us how those artists worked), he's produced what his modernist heroes also sought: a liberating new way to see the world.
About the Author
Jonah Lehrer is editor-at-large for Seed Magazine. A graduate of Columbia University and a Rhodes scholar, Lehrer has worked in the lab of Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel and in the kitchens of Le Cirque 2000 and Le Bernardin. He has written for Nature, NPR, NOVA ScienceNow, and The MIT Technology Review, and he writes a highly regarded blog, The Frontal Cortex.
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