Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Proust Was a Neuroscientist

by Jonah Lehrer (Goodreads Author)

3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 · rating details · 3,608 ratings · 517 reviews

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 pain...more

Hardcover, 256 pages

Published November 1st 2007 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (first published January 1st 2007)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

Radiolab Suggested Readings

13th out of 150 books — 126 voters

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Food on the Cover

95th out of 335 books — 218 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jun 03, 2008 Tim rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: oliver sacks fans, artists, alicias

Proust Was a Neuroscientist turned out to be the book I'd been looking to read for a long time. Apparently there have been quite a few books prior to this one about the "third culture," the bridge between art and science (and unfortunately I've not read any of them) —Lehrer mentions E.O. Wilson's Consilience and Ian McEwan's Saturday (a kind of update on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway ) as unsuccessful and successful works on the subject, respectively— but I was very pleased with the scope and...more Proust Was a Neuroscientist turned out to be the book I'd been looking to read for a long time. Apparently there have been quite a few books prior to this one about the "third culture," the bridge between art and science (and unfortunately I've not read any of them) —Lehrer mentions E.O. Wilson's Consilience and Ian McEwan's Saturday (a kind of update on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway ) as unsuccessful and successful works on the subject, respectively— but I was very pleased with the scope and depth of this book, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the workings of the human brain, memory and perception, especially as they apply to the arts. I found it super fascinating, and a very rewarding read. Lehrer writes the concepts with enough detail to be interesting, but in language plain enough that you won't have to spend time looking up extra information or texts unless you want to.

I did feel that Lehrer romanticizes the artists in the book slightly, (possibly because he's less an artist than a scientist?) the artists surely receive less criticism for their ideas (which in the book are usually validated decades later by science, oops, spoiler) than the equivalent scientists which in some cases are painted as misguided logicals swayed by the slightest change in fashionable thought. I'm not saying I disagree completely, just that there isn't as much criticism of the prevalent arts assumptions as there could be (there is some, particularly around Cezanne and the attitudes of the Impressionists) and it may be slightly misleading.

I do very much agree with Lehrer's main idea in the book: Science is a kind of foreign language, a type of overlay built on to the human experience—molded by humans but external, separated from humans by it's precision: mathematics, theorems, equations. It speaks of what we experience but not in the way we experience it. Art, on the other hand, far more fluid and subjective, speaks in the terms of humans. It allows us to use our own internal language to express and understand the world, in context, in focus, and in the most meaningful way possible. Our way.

For me, an entire book about that— the single most important thing in my life, was really excellent.

(less)

9 likes · like · see review

Feb 05, 2008 Jenna Los rated it 3 of 5 stars

The premise of this book is great, but the author fails to make good enough connections half the time. A few of the chapters are fabulous and he should have quit while he was ahead, but I suppose that would have left a short book. My advice is to only read these chapters: 3 - Auguste Escoffier and The Essence of Taste (best chapter); 4 - Marcel Proust and The Method of Memory; and Igor Stravinsky and The Source of Music (2nd best chapter). Chapters 5 & 7 are also okay if you have more time,...more

9 likes · like · see review

Feb 09, 2008 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars

A fun and quick read that attempts to show how late-19th and early-20th Century artists presaged modern neuroscience. Each artist gets his or her own chapter and is paired with a scientific correlate. Here is the order of the pairings:

1) Walt Whitman - Feeling
2) George Eliot - Freedom
3) Auguste Escoffier - Taste
4) Marcel Proust - Memory
5) Paul Cezanne - Sight
6) Igor Stravinsky - Music
7) Gertrude Stein - Language
8) Virginia Woolf - Self

My only major problem with the book is that the author repeat...more

5 likes · like · see review

Apr 07, 2012 Elaine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebooks

What an unusual book, about art and science, and how artists:poets, novelists, painters and even a chef intuited how the self sees and feels long before scientists did. The book Age of Wonder shows that 18th and early 19th century poets and scientists considered themselves collaborators.

Those happy days had ended by the time Walt Whitman arrived on the scene, allowing nothing to be deemed truth unless it could be observed, measured and manipulated.

Nevertheless, Whitman, who cared for soldiers in...more What an unusual book, about art and science, and how artists:poets, novelists, painters and even a chef intuited how the self sees and feels long before scientists did. The book Age of Wonder shows that 18th and early 19th century poets and scientists considered themselves collaborators.

Those happy days had ended by the time Walt Whitman arrived on the scene, allowing nothing to be deemed truth unless it could be observed, measured and manipulated.

Nevertheless, Whitman, who cared for soldiers in hospitals during the Civil War, put forth, in his poetry, the relationship between the body, the whole body, and emotion. Likewise, Proust was prescient about the nature of memory. George Eliot, an avid reader of science, explored human nature and the malleability of the mind. Escofier, French chef extraordinaire, not only discovered the 5th taste but also much about the physical origins of appetite, besides hunger, of course.

Cezanne, to me, was the most amazing. He noticed that the mind sees what it is trained to see. In other words, reality is in our brains. It's not out there. If you read just one piece of nonfiction this year, make it this chapter. By all means, read the others, too, but this, to me, is essential.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Lehrer's chapter on Gertrude Stein who, to me, was an arrogant talentless bore. She was famous because she knew famous people and bought a lot of paintings. Since she wasn't averse to gossip, people accepted her invitations. That's my take on her fame, anyway.

What galled me about Lehrer's assertion that Stein "discovered" deep structure in language 50 years before Chomsky was that neither Stein nor Chomsky did so. Chomsky learned structural linguistics, which focused on syntax, and stressed the self-evident fact that we change the deep structure of assertion, for instance, to create questions. Thus, "He did go" becomes "Did he go?" More interestingly, "Jack went" becomes "Did Jack go?" Since anthropological linguists were examining such phenomena by the opening of the 20th century because they were busy writing grammars .of tribal peoples. What Chomsky did that was noteworthy was to show that Behaviorism is grossly wrong. He also used mathematical notations to describe syntax.

Lehrer claims that Stein's writings were an attempt to show how syntax governs what we say. Scholars in the Middle Ages knew that. They studied Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. They had to compare the syntax of these languages to English to learn them. Lehrer can claim ignorance on the grounds of not knowing the history of Linguistics, but to quote Stein's unlovely, unclever, and unmeaning prose as an example of showing deep structure is silly. He quotes her sentence, "The care with which incredible justness and likeness all this makes a magnificent asparagus."

This is not pushing syntax, uncovering its role in language. Before Stein, Lewis Carroll did that superbly in Jabberwocky. Since he apparently wanted a writer to illustrate how we are governed by syntax, Lehrer could have used e.e. cummings, "Anyone lived in a pretty how town with up so many floating bells down...he danced his didn't..."

Except for the Stein chapter, this is a great and unusual read(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jun 07, 2012 Trisha rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"It is imperative that we give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is grope for the truth even thought it is beyond our reach. There is no authority beyond the reach of critcism." Karl Popper

The overall theme is that art and science need each other to form the most complete picture. Although I enjoyed the whole book, but I really identified with Chapter...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 23, 2009 Jafar rated it 3 of 5 stars

Lehrer used to be a lab technician in a neuroscience lab. His lab work involved investigating memory. He would read Proust while waiting for his experiments to finish. Then it dawned to him that Proust was right about memory long before modern neuroscience got it right. And that was the forming idea for this book. Lehrer describes a few artists and their works to show that a lot of times artists discover truths about human nature while scientists of their time still have it wrong. Art foretellin...more Lehrer used to be a lab technician in a neuroscience lab. His lab work involved investigating memory. He would read Proust while waiting for his experiments to finish. Then it dawned to him that Proust was right about memory long before modern neuroscience got it right. And that was the forming idea for this book. Lehrer describes a few artists and their works to show that a lot of times artists discover truths about human nature while scientists of their time still have it wrong. Art foretelling science. These are the artists that he discusses and their particular insight into human mind.

1. Walt Whitman’s poetry implies that our emotions and sensations are not solely produced by the brain, but involve our entire body. There’s a body-brain loop that goes both ways between sensations and emotions.

2. George Elliot rejected the mechanical and deterministic worldview of her time and believed in something that is close to what is now called neuroplasticity.

3. The French chef Auguste Escoffier (he’s the guy who invented menu) was ahead of the narrow understanding that the biologists of his time had of the sense of taste.

4. Marcel Proust knew that recollection is inseparable from memory. The act of remembering can alter the memory.

5. Paul Cezanne’s painting tried to show that vision is not like a picture getting sent accurately to the brain through camera-like eyes. Seeing involves a great amount of post-processing by the brain of the signals that eyes send.

6. Igor Stravinsky understood how the brain expects patterns and how denying these pattern causes conflict and pain. He also knew that the mind was plastic and over time dissonance becomes consonance.

7. Gertrude Stein’s deliberately “nonsensical” writing was an attempt to show that the structure of the language was unavoidable. This was 50 years before Chomsky and at a time when behaviorism claimed to explain language as well.

8. Virginia Wolf’s characters demonstrate the idea of an emerging self. We continually emerge and construct our self from the scraps of our sensations. Self is an illusion that we invent by turning our sensory inputs into consciousness.

Most chapters are an interesting and informative mix of art history and science. As for the Lehrer’s main thesis – artists being ahead of science of their time – in some chapter you can see a case, but in others Lehrer just seems to be forcing it. I have an issue with Lehrer's overall methodology to begin with. If you pick any artist (doesn’t have to be Proust – any half-decent one will do as well) and study their works and look hard enough, you’ll find something that they were right about and arguably ahead of their time. So what? What does it really prove?(less)

9 likes · like · see review

Feb 07, 2009 Jennifer de Guzman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

Jonathan Lehrer examines the avante garde work of eight artists -- one poet (Walt Whitman), four novelists (George Eliot, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf), one painter (Paul Cezanne), one composer (Igor Stravinsky), and one chef (Auguste Escoffier) -- and shows how it anticipated scientific principles that would later be discovered. The eight essays are absorbing, and Lehrer writes about science in a way that is accessible and enlightening for those more familiar with the human...more Jonathan Lehrer examines the avante garde work of eight artists -- one poet (Walt Whitman), four novelists (George Eliot, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf), one painter (Paul Cezanne), one composer (Igor Stravinsky), and one chef (Auguste Escoffier) -- and shows how it anticipated scientific principles that would later be discovered. The eight essays are absorbing, and Lehrer writes about science in a way that is accessible and enlightening for those more familiar with the humanities. His literary interpretations of works like Middlemarch, In Search of Lost Time, and To the Lighthouse do not stray from traditional readings and offer anything new as far as literary criticism goes, but that's not really in the scope of this book.

The weakest chapter is that on George Eliot, in which he seeks to show that Eliot's rejection of the determinist philosophy of her time is borne out not only in her writing but in the science of DNA. However, in seeking to show that we have biological freedom, Lehrer overlooks that we, like the characters in Eliot's novels, have free will but are born into unalterable circumstance and are affected by forces outside our control -- such as the choices of others and nature (as the characters of Eliot's The Mill on the Floss could tell us).

The balance of the book is very strong, however, and I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Whitman, Stravinsky and Woolf. The inseparability of body and mind, the neuroscience of music, and the construction of consciousness are all elegantly explored and explained.

The final chapter is a "coda" in which Lehrer expresses a wish for a "fourth culture" that will "freely transplant knowledge between the sciences and the humanities, and will focus on connecting the reductionist fact to our actual experience." He is very persuasive, and a desire to better understand how science can enlighten art and art can enlighten science is what led me to his book in the first place. I do find, though, that Lehrer can be too positive about the limits of science; he writes, "It is naive to think that science can solve everything by itself, or that everything can be solved." Too often I've seen in centuries-old writing the opinion that we would never discover something that today we have, such as what stars are made of and how they burn. I agree that there are limits to our knowledge now, and that art helps us delve through those limitations, but I do not think it follows that we will not someday understand and know what we don't today. I think it is better to say that art helps us to discover what we do not yet understand and know, and once those problems are solved, it will discover more. Art is the guide for our increasing knowledge, leading us to new paths of inquiry.

I do not agree with Lehrer on everything, but I value this book for that very reason. Where I disagree with him leads me to think things out for myself, and the fascinating work he does linking art and science inspires me to read more, to learn more.(less)

6 likes · like · see review

Feb 25, 2011 Rae rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-memoir, 2011

In this collection of artists and scientific explorations, Lehrer attempts to show how art can explain what science cannot. Cezanne painted swatches of color that show how our eyes really do see - not as pixels but as swatches. Virginia Wolfe knew the mind was a fragmented collection of sensations held together by a self that arose from that and science has still not been able to find if there is a where for that greater self.

Very enjoyable book and unlike How We Decide, not filled with scientif...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 22, 2008 Tattered Cover Book Store added it

Recommended to Tattered Cover by: Rachael

Shelves: staff-recommends

The work of certain artists, poets and composers has anticipated neuroscientists, discoveries of what the brain does and how it does it. Read all about it! Well written, too.

Rachael

1 like · like · see review

Sep 19, 2012 Francisco rated it 5 of 5 stars

A very interesting, well written well researched book about the parallels between art and neuroscience as shown in the works of artists such as Whitman, Proust, Stravinsky, Cezanne. Woolf's treatment of the self and Proust's treatment of memory, for example, correspond to the discoveries about how our brain works. If you believe, as I do, that science is an art and that art is a science, this book will be fascinating. Not the least of it's merits are the light it sheds on the life of the artist'...more

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Jonah Lehrer, a Rhodes scholar working in the lab of a Nobel Prize

like · see review

Jan 20, 2013 Jana Light rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a very engaging book, even though I found some of Lehrer's conclusions problematic. In his discussion of the ways art anticipates certain breakthroughs in neuroscience, Lehrer elucidates the different knowledge spheres in which science and art exist and how those the two "cultures" (as he calls them) can only enhance each other if approached as equally significant and unique in their contributions to the conversation of what it means to be human. Ultimately, science describes what *"is"...more This was a very engaging book, even though I found some of Lehrer's conclusions problematic. In his discussion of the ways art anticipates certain breakthroughs in neuroscience, Lehrer elucidates the different knowledge spheres in which science and art exist and how those the two "cultures" (as he calls them) can only enhance each other if approached as equally significant and unique in their contributions to the conversation of what it means to be human. Ultimately, science describes what *"is" and art describes what "is" "feels like," and that often "feels like" precedes understanding of what "is." Being human means feeling before understanding, and as such both disciplines together can help us sort out the complexity of humanity and The Self.

As I happen to love most the artists Lehrer uses to frame each chapter (Woolf, Stravinsky, Cezanne, Whitman, to name a few -- I loathe Stein's writing but appreciate her literary/psychological goals and influence), I particularly enjoyed the bits of artistic criticism and analysis in the book. The descriptions of how the brain works when someone presents a cohesive self, listens to a piece of music, recalls a memory, etc., were also interesting as I have very little science in my postsecondary educational background and everything was written in such a way that even science dummies like me can easily grasp the concepts and processes described. If I could crudely summarize Lehrer's conclusion concerning how the brain operates, the brain and its functions do not operate like a "mirror" as we most often assume, but as a "tool" by which we categorize, see, perceive and ultimately experience reality. The concept of reality is, as a result, difficult, and we would do best to keep an open mind and benefit from the insights we can glean from all spheres of knowledge -- those spheres to which art and science contribute included.

One criticism I have of the book (besides the couple aforementioned problematic conclusions) was that Lehrer really seemed to be writing a book centered on the psychologist William James and his contributions or influences. James pops up in almost every chapter, so much so that it seems to unveil a bias or the scraps of a previously-rejected book proposal. It's like this book is Lehrer's _William James's Contributions to Art, Literature and Neuroscience_ reframed for popular consumption. I don't think this is a particularly black mark against reading the book, but for some reason it annoyed me. It needed to be acknowledged; it made the book at the end seem somehow slightly disingenuous.

I toyed between giving this book a 3-star or 4-star rating. I think I will stick with 4-star as I learned much about how the brain works and thoroughly enjoyed the interdisciplinary approach. I'd like to reread Lehrer's _How We Decide_, I have his _Imagine_ on deck for reading, and this book only solidified my intent to read those works. (less)

like · see review

Oct 15, 2012 Loy Machedo rated it 2 of 5 stars

I do not want to sound crafty – at least more than I actually am nor do I want to portray that I have apprehended something I found a bit hard to fathom. Proust was a Neuroscientist is one such book – which is pretty incredible in its composition but can get you sapped in its pages. I had to read and re-read the book, including getting help from others to checking out reference materials online just to get this Book Review in place.

Let’s see if I can decipher the book in the most simplistic form...more

like · see review

Aug 29, 2012 Nick rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was a book that seemed utterly unconcerned with backing up the argument made by the title. In the book Lehrer makes many connections that are truly weak and instead of enforcing those connections he utilizes both art and neuroscience to battle against reductionism. The book does a good job at explaining why Lehrer disagrees with any and all reductionists and finds most ideas of singularity revolting; however, I in no way found myself to have a better understanding of the similarities betwee...more This was a book that seemed utterly unconcerned with backing up the argument made by the title. In the book Lehrer makes many connections that are truly weak and instead of enforcing those connections he utilizes both art and neuroscience to battle against reductionism. The book does a good job at explaining why Lehrer disagrees with any and all reductionists and finds most ideas of singularity revolting; however, I in no way found myself to have a better understanding of the similarities between neuroscientists and artists afterwards: the only similarity I could find described in this book was that it was possible for an artist to come to a conclusion that was also reached through science.

Essentially my problem with the book was that although Lehrer found artists whose ideas - arguably - agreed with current findings in neuroscience, he never even considers that this was due to chance. He analyzes only 8 artists from the past one hundred and fifty or some years (starting with Walt Whitman). I don't claim to have a full list of the people who made major contributions to any form of art through those times (broadly construed as he goes as he assesses both a cook and a musician) but I would assume that there have definitely been hundreds if not thousands. The way I see it, the fact that 8 artists have been consistent with scientific findings is really quite unremarkable. I felt that I didn't need 200 pages to learn that it was possible to express a view that happened to be right. Through the book Lehrer makes no attempt at saying that all artists are neuroscientists and in fact he finds that the true "neuroscientists are just the ones that are lucky enough -my words not his- to agree with the current findings. In fact he goes as far as to insult many artists that were popular during their time including those in the realist groups of both literature and painting. Although I have no particular affinity to any of these artists or their works I certainly found his scathing criticism of them to be out of place and unnecessary.

The reason I gave this book two stars is that it did accomplish two things. One: it provided solid biographies of the eight artists lives. Two: it managed to describe some interesting studies in neuroscience. This is however, about where my praise ends. The scientific descriptions that Lehrer gives are often quite misleading, saying things like "Inside our cells, shards and scraps of nucleic acid and protein float aimlessly" when in fact they are carefully guided by a grand network of microfibers and rarely if ever "aimlessly float" in the cells.

Worse than his descriptions is his so called analysis of the science. Particularly bad was his essay on George Eliot whom he said expressed the idea that humans have free will - thus bravely opposing the reductionist Darwinism of her time. He then "explains" retrotransposons, ("junk genes" that move around in the DNA and are very prevalent in neurons) neuroplasticity (which means that neurons can make new connections) and late neurogenesis (which means that new nerves can be born in the brain after adolescence). After describing these things he proceeds to analyze the information. First he paraphrases and quotes Karl Popper, (a great philosopher of science) saying that "life is not a clock, it is a cloud. Like a cloud, life is 'highly irregular, disorderly, and more or less unpredictable'". Within this same paragraph, having added nothing new, he concludes that "the idée fixe of deterministic order proved to be a mirage. We remain as mysteriously free as ever". He repeats this conclusion in a few more ways. He says that "[George Eliot] knew that we inherit minds that let us escape our inheritance; we can always impose our will onto biology" I for one found myself unconvinced that we can in fact do this and equally uncertain that George Eliot had even asserted it. He concludes the chapter with the final conclusion: "As Eliot anticipated, our freedom is built into us. As its most fundamental level, life is full of leeway, defined by a plasticity that defies every determinism". This is a grand statement made with very little evidence and supposedly supported by plasticity which truly isn't understood to be an indeterminable process controlled by freewill.

In all, this book was filled with careless writing, presumptuous conclusions, and misleading hooks. I would not recommend it to anyone as a good source for either neuroscience or the way artists can understand the mind.
(less)

like · see review

Dec 06, 2011 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars

Lehrer's debut is a marvelous introduction into the linkages between literary modernism and neuroscience. Writing in a style at once youthful and insightful, he manages to balance an engrossing historical narrative of the life and work of some of the more colorful nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists with appropriately (at least for this reader) dumbed down scientific explanations of the foibles of memory, brain plasticity, and the language instinct. Jonah's intent doesn't seem to be to con...more Lehrer's debut is a marvelous introduction into the linkages between literary modernism and neuroscience. Writing in a style at once youthful and insightful, he manages to balance an engrossing historical narrative of the life and work of some of the more colorful nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists with appropriately (at least for this reader) dumbed down scientific explanations of the foibles of memory, brain plasticity, and the language instinct. Jonah's intent doesn't seem to be to convince us of the irrefutability of his research, which, at times, is still very experimental. Rather he takes pleasure in the worthy exercise of paying homage to his literary and artistic heroes and suggesting that art, although idiosyncratic and subjective, is as relevant a discourse as science for understanding the peculiarities of the human mind. The book might appear too much like a multidisciplinary college dissertation, albeit a brilliant one, were it not for Lehrer's archivist's eye for curiosities and non-essential facts. He forays into George Elliot's love life, providing an unsparing description of her famous ugliness (on page 30 there is an drawing of what Victorian biologist Herbert Spencer describes as her "low forehead, dull grey eye . . . vast pendulous nose"). He shows how Whitman's poetic revelation, the notion that the body and mind are inseparable, grew out of his work as a wound dresser treating amputated soldiers in Union hospitals. Perhaps most engaging, at least for someone interested in music, is his discussion of how Igor Stravinsky's Paris premiere of the The Rite of Spring led to a disastrous riot. As we learn in a section called Plato's mistake, it is not the rationality of music but its novelty that releases dopamine in the corticofugal network and makes us feel. All of this is, of course, remarkably fascinating and good fodder to impress your high-minded friends at cocktail parties. You also get your money's worth out of 197 pages. Incidentally, I am now reading War and Peace and not exactly sailing through it. (less)

like · see review

Oct 10, 2011 Amanda rated it 5 of 5 stars

I rarely read nonfiction. When I do I expect it to be accessible, interesting, and to inform me. The best kind of books, fiction or nonfiction, are the ones that make me think differently. This book completely changed the way I thought about literary heavy hitters and artists of all kinds. It concerns a subject near and dear to my heart: the relationship between art and science. Being an English major, I'm more often than not spotted with a Stephen King novel in my hand, Hemingway or McCarthy if...more

2 likes · like · see review

Oct 03, 2011 Dan Russell rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: science lovers

Lehrer does a clever thing by taking a slice through contemporary neuroscience as seen from the perspective of different authors. Considering the nature of emotions by reading Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” or memory by looking through the eyes of Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” allows the author to weave together science as revealed by art. I’m not sure I believe his basic argument that art precedes science—he’s cherry-picking the data here to only show positive examples and ignores the vast...more Lehrer does a clever thing by taking a slice through contemporary neuroscience as seen from the perspective of different authors. Considering the nature of emotions by reading Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” or memory by looking through the eyes of Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” allows the author to weave together science as revealed by art. I’m not sure I believe his basic argument that art precedes science—he’s cherry-picking the data here to only show positive examples and ignores the vast number of writers who are blatantly wrong about the nature of mind. Still, I enjoy the combination as providing some illumination. Great writers DO provide new language that gives us a way to think about and consider phenomena, especially the slippery, indescribable sensations that flit through our consciousness. Considering the process of visual perception through Cezanne’s point-of-view brings a historical perspective to the front. In Cezanne’s day, perception was thought of a “perfect reflections of the outside world. The eye was like a camera: it collected pixels of light and passed them passively on to the brain.” His artwork is clearly NOT that, but plays with the difference between what’s actually there and what’s perceived. (p. 97)

I also learned a few things that I really hadn’t known. Example: The idea that the CPEB protein can exist in multiple stable configurations, but can be flipped from one state to another by a neurotransmitter (the basis of long-term memory encoding?) was astounding. (p. 93-94)

Lehrer gets a little fuzzy and over-the-top in the last chapter. Virginia Woolf is a great writer that really does try to be internally introspective, but Lehrer seems to over-value her perspective as telling us that consciousness is fundamentally unknowable. For all his railing about post-modernism as a language trick that devalues rigorous thought, it feels to me as though he does the same thing in end. In discarding reductionism as a methodology for understanding, I think he overdid it and fell into a pool of abstractions that don’t carry his argument forward very well.
But I still think it’s a great book. Just don’t take the last 12 pages too seriously.
(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Sep 13, 2011 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, psychology, linguistics, music

This is a truly perceptive book, about the linkages between art/language/music/cooking/writing and the science of the brain. Each chapter focuses on a different artist, and the insights of his/her artistry into the workings of the brain. I especially appreciated the chapter about Escoffier, the French chef who invented the concept of a restaurant menu. He discovered and put to use the taste of umami, a distinct reaction of taste buds to glutamate. He had a deep understanding about the effects of...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 30, 2011 Al Bità rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Readers should not be put off by the title of this book; it could seem that it will deal with difficult subjects, but such an approach would be wrong.

This fascinating book looks at the works of eight 'artists' whom we might call 'modernist' (they fit into the period from ca. mid-19th to mid-20th centuries) from the perspective of a neuroscientist. Lehrer sees their works as containing prototypes of human qualities which would only later would be confirmed by the new discipline of neuroscience. W...more Readers should not be put off by the title of this book; it could seem that it will deal with difficult subjects, but such an approach would be wrong.

This fascinating book looks at the works of eight 'artists' whom we might call 'modernist' (they fit into the period from ca. mid-19th to mid-20th centuries) from the perspective of a neuroscientist. Lehrer sees their works as containing prototypes of human qualities which would only later would be confirmed by the new discipline of neuroscience. Walt Whitman (feeling/the body), George Eliot (mind/ freedom), Auguste Escoffier (taste), Marcel Proust (memory), Paul Cezanne (sight), Igor Stravinski (music), Gertrude Stein (language) and Virginia Woolf (mind/self) all dealt with the themes mentioned with as much clarity and honesty as they could muster. By being honest to their understanding of themselves they revealed to others things which neuroscience has since suggested are basic truths about the human condition. Their art is thus connected essentially with being human beings and humanity in general.

All this could have been rather ponderous and heavy, but the special thing about this book is that the opposite is true. These eight individuals and their concerns in their art are discussed as the first and foremost subject of each, so that we learn to appreciate their output in ways that would not otherwise have been accessible to the ordinary reader. It enriches our understanding of them. The 'neuroscience' part is almost secondary to the main theme: that true artists give us access through their art to a better understanding of ourselves. This cross-disciplinary approach suggests a more holistic approach to the arts is not only possible but also perhaps essential in expanding our appreciation of them in new and exciting ways. A few decades ago such an approach would have been considered 'inappropriate' at University (one could not safely argue that scientific views expressed in these works had any validity from a 'literary' or 'artistic' discipline — not if you wanted to pass your exams…) So first and foremost, this delightful work is about art (in whatever guise that might come in) and only secondarily about 'science'; but it quietly and subtly suggests that the two are not necessarily at odds with one another.

At the end of this work (p. 197) the author expresses his purpose: 'I hope that this book has shown how art and science might be reintegrated into an expansive critical sphere. Both art and science can be useful, and both can be true. In our own time, art is a necessary counterbalance to the glories and excesses of scientific reductionism, especially as they are applied to human experience. This is the artist's purpose: to keep *our* reality, with all its frailties and question marks, on the agenda.' Earlier, towards the end (pp. 187-8) of his section on Virginia Woolf, where issues of the mind and the self are looked at, he is more specific regarding his attitude to purely reductionist interpretations of the mind: 'To define consciousness solely in terms of oscillations in the prefrontal cortex is to miss out on our subjective reality. The self feels whole, but all science can see is its parts… If science breaks us apart, art puts us together again.'

Whether this noble sentiment will be confirmed or not in the future (especially in relation to astonishing developments in neuropsychology still at the infancy of its discipline) remains to be seen. It would be a grave mistake, however, to think that the author is saying that artists can somehow 'predict' future scientific facts in their works — they can't, and it is not their function to do so; what he is saying is that artists true to their art, and able to communicate their understandings of themselves to others in their work, will, ipso facto, be true to whatever truths about ourselves that future science might confirm. In the meantime, this superb little book will educate you in ways not really allowed before in the arts; it sheds new light on a more extensive appreciation of the arts and science as partners, and of humanity in general.(less)

like · see review

May 22, 2011 Oroboros72 rated it 2 of 5 stars

I think that Lehrer's thesis is flawed. When he says that art is ahead of science, it doesn't really mean anything to me. Proust describes a connection between smell and memory before neuroscientists demonstrated that there was one, but that is not because he is an artist or because he had some special insight into memory that scientists couldn't or didn't have. He describes memory in this way because he is a human and that is how the memory system is set up. Before Proust, I am sure many many p...more

3 likes · like · see review

May 08, 2011 Courtney Johnston rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: big-ideas-made-accessible, books-about-books, borrowed, science

Jonah Lehrer argues through eight case studies - Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cezanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf - that "celebrated artists discovered truths - real, tangible truths - about the mind, anticipating the findings of neuroscience." From the blurb:

We learn how Proust revealed the fallibility of memory, how George Eliot understood the brain's malleable nature, how the French chef Escoffier intuited umami (the fifth taste), how

...more Jonah Lehrer argues through eight case studies - Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cezanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf - that "celebrated artists discovered truths - real, tangible truths - about the mind, anticipating the findings of neuroscience." From the blurb:

We learn how Proust revealed the fallibility of memory, how George Eliot understood the brain's malleable nature, how the French chef Escoffier intuited umami (the fifth taste), how Cezanne worked out the subtleties of vision, and how Virginia Woolf pierced the mysteries of consciousness.

I just didn't buy it. At most, these artists made use of human phenomena - the way taste and smell can trigger memories, the fact that denatured proteins taste delicious, the way that our brains take time to understand how "noise" = "music", the way that our eyes can build a recognisable image from almost abstract elements - in their work, but they don't predict how scientists will test and describe the brain's behaviour.

I will make an exception of Escoffier and Stein. Stein pushed language as far as she could, producing senseless sentences that were still grammatically correct, prefiguring Chomsky's 'Colourless green ideas sleep furiously' and theory that we are born with an inbuilt understanding of grammar. Stein herself had been through medical school and worked in neuroscience; some of her first writing experiments turned her clinical notes into gibberish.

Escoffier to seemed to have almost a scientific method - trying to delight his guest, he refined and codified recipes, and turned established practices upside down. Grand food, for example, had previously been served cold, as its grandness was partly derived from its preposterous presentation, which would have been ruined by heat. Escoffier realised that hot food releases smell, and smell is important to taste. He was also a stock an sauce master, deglazing pans and boiling things down - the practices which denature proteins and creates glutamate, the amino acid our body craves (we produce more than 40 grams of glutamate a day, and so we need our Marmite top-ups). At the same time though, Escoffier was hardly peering around the human tongue looking for the tiny areas that would respond not to salty, sweet, bitter, sour but to rich savoury glutamate.

I guess I don't see the difference between Cezanne and the ancient Egyptian brewers who passed wooden spoons down from generation to generation, believing they had the magical power to start beer (which they did, through the microorganisms that lived in the cracks of the wood). Both are concerned with the end product, not necessarily the phenomena that produces it. Cezanne was interested in how the eye works and how the mind builds up shapes, sure - but really how close was he to the five steps of visual processing?

Lehrer is very sincerely trying to bring the arts and science back together - to repair the right of C.P. Snow's two cultures. I'm not sure this book does it though. The art sections end up feeling like illustrations of the neuroscience - entertaining introductions, but not intellectual equals. Having said that, it's a perfectly enjoyable book, very readable, and packed with snippets and tidbits of information.

(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jan 04, 2011 Bill Wheelock rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: brain-books

Pretty good. Makes some leaps in logic and attempts to revise history in a way to show that artists were discovering facts about how we perceive before we had the scientific evidence to prove them. Now we can prove them. OK, but that isn't really a surprise, and when you pick and choose from the past of art history, you can pretty much find examples to fit any scientific theory.

What is interesting are the big ideas: that there may be biological explanation for the need for an avant-garde. "New"n...more

like · see review

Nov 25, 2009 K rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book appeared unsolicited in my mailbox from a bookworm friend and instantly, I could tell, I would consume it in one sitting: a slim paperback with a commercial-pop cover design, Oliver Sacks endorsement, and incongruous title-cum-slogan. Ah, yes, every nerd’s most guilty pleasure – an instantaneous sugar high of easy information. Intrigue me with the revelation of some vague underlying life pattern! Enlighten me with the minimum amount of detail! Break down this world into consumable nugg...more

4 likes · like · see review

Jul 12, 2009 Catherine rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, medicine, mental-illness, fp

You have no idea how much it pains me to dislike a book that Oliver Sacks hails as brilliant, but dear god, I found this tepid, unproven, and faintly ridiculous in turn. Lehrer never actually proves his thesis - that artists of several kinds anticipated the discoveries of neuroscience by several decades. Instead he describes a neuroscientific discovery and reads back into the work of selected artists a definitive revelation they never sought or articulated - the cause and effect he sees plainly...more You have no idea how much it pains me to dislike a book that Oliver Sacks hails as brilliant, but dear god, I found this tepid, unproven, and faintly ridiculous in turn. Lehrer never actually proves his thesis - that artists of several kinds anticipated the discoveries of neuroscience by several decades. Instead he describes a neuroscientific discovery and reads back into the work of selected artists a definitive revelation they never sought or articulated - the cause and effect he sees plainly does not match. Worse, he locates those revelations entirely in the Western world - the idea that Walt Whitman understood that the brain and body are mutually dependent in creating our experience of the world and - he intimates - understood it first would likely come as quite a shock to, say, the Buddhists and Hindus of the East who have been exploring the mind-body connection in practice, song, chant, and art for centuries. Similarly, Escouffier made fantastic stock - I am quite convinced of this fact. That Escouffier did so because he understood something about how the brain works rather than because he just thought things tasted better with bouquet garni, however? I'm unconvinced.

There's also some shady science in this text, although I'm not sure if it's because Lehrer is getting the science completely wrong or simply because his writing is imprecise. When talking of Civil War soldiers experiencing phantom limb pain, for example, Lehrer argues that the persistence of pain in no-longer-existent body parts showed that "Since soul is body and body is soul, to lose a part of one's body is to lose a part of one's soul. . . . The mind cannot be extricated from its matter, for mind and matter, these two seemingly opposite substances, are impossibly intertwined." (14-15) I don't question the sentiment, but I do question its applicability to phantom limb pain, which neuroscience has proven to be wholly and irrevocably a matter of the brain acting alone - of over-active cells, of physical memory, all of which can be erased if the brain is tricked into thinking it has a limb again (mirror therapy is used to treat the phantom limb pain of amputees returning from Afghanistan and Iraq). Similarly, he writes that early 19th century scientist LaPlace "knew that two astronomers plotting the orbit of the same planet at the same time would differ reliably in their data. The fault was not in the stars, but in ourselves." Yet we know, thanks to quantum physics, that two astronomers plotting the orbit of the same planet can differ reliably in their data because time does not move in all places and at all times at the same pace. Is Lehrer claiming only that LaPlace put things down to human error, or that we still consider ourselves to be the problem, and not the stars (and, clearly, not the space-time continuum, which is the real issue).

I am no scientist - all of this knowledge is gleaned from a somewhat obsessive love of the science articles in The New Yorker - but this (and Lehrer's claim that a bird is a mammal) made me question his other scientific claims.

I was also bored. But that almost seems by the by.(less)

7 likes · like · see review

Jun 16, 2009 Jane rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book says a lot of fascinating things, but I can't escape the feeling that it is watered down science and simplified literary criticism. All in all, it is a good read with plenty of thought-provoking topics condensed into eight chapters. Not too challenging of a read, but it points to and references works that are more challenging and sheds some light on the ridiculousness of the "cultural divide" between sciences and humanities. The problem with this book,is that it assumes the popular tak...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 16, 2011 Tokreads rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: tok-cafe

The book Proust was a neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer allowed a comprehensive insight into what he describes as the “4th culture” – a merging of the natural sciences and the arts. Lehrer explores various artist’s works, from the cook to the painter, musician and writer and their early discoveries of the complex workings of the brain. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book lies in the connections that Lehrer draws between these works of artists and the history behind the neuroscience, whi...more

like · see review

Tokreads Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer looks at the artists who predicted scientific finds before they were "discovered" by scientists. The eclec...more Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer looks at the artists who predicted scientific finds before they were "discovered" by scientists. The eclectic mix of artists, from a cook to a composer, is what drew me to this choice. The collection includes: Four novelists, a chef, a composer, a painter and a poet. Lehrer looks at George Elliot who discovered that brain's ability to change, Escoiffer who discovered Umami, Walt Whitman who believed body and mind were one and Cezzanne who told us that what we see we must interprate. All of these artists had found truths that the sciences are only now rediscovering.
I thought the structure of the book was brilliant, it didn't deal with all the artists in bulk, instead it specialised and explored each one individually. I thought this was brilliant, it meant I wouldn't loose focus from too much information on only one subject. In addition to this the book was composed of essays on each artist, rather than just one long essay on why Lehrer is right in believing that artist's insights have led us to the new discoveries we are making today. In a way this book resembled Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, which focuses on held beliefs that are supported by the scientific community but not science itself.
This said, I found the last three chapters less compelling. Igor Stravinsky said that people's plastic brains could be taught to enjoy new music. I found this a little odd as this is what happens every time a new genre of music is introduced to a child, or a new genre comes along. Virginia Woolf's ideas on "self" were interesting but lacked a connection to the rest of the book. Gertrude Stein attempted to show that the structure of language is build into us by making words meaningless. I didn't understand this idea at all, the words have meaning that's why we choose which ones we choose.
Also I found that in the first few chapters Lehrer pays too much attention to the biographies of the artists. While interesting, I didn't see how it connected to the study of Neuroscience or the rediscovery of these ideas.
I liked the connection Lehrer manages to make between the arts and the sciences and (in my opinion) all throughout the book Lehrer tries to make one simple point; that we can try to quantify every atom of our existence but we still won't understand it- leave the interpretations to the artists.

Ami Waltham(less)
Aug 17, 2011 10:28am

Feb 20, 2011 James Mcgann rated it 3 of 5 stars

Since I myself recently became a neuroscientist, I was intrigued to read this book I had heard good things about. And it was a good read, mostly. Lehrer's main thesis, which he tries to argue in each chapter, is that artists, because of their intuitive and wholistic way of thinking about the human condition, have come to the realization of certain neurological truths that science is just beginning to elucidate. This includes the fallacy of the brain/body dichotomy (Whitman), the process of thoug...more Since I myself recently became a neuroscientist, I was intrigued to read this book I had heard good things about. And it was a good read, mostly. Lehrer's main thesis, which he tries to argue in each chapter, is that artists, because of their intuitive and wholistic way of thinking about the human condition, have come to the realization of certain neurological truths that science is just beginning to elucidate. This includes the fallacy of the brain/body dichotomy (Whitman), the process of thought and personality (George Eliot and Virginia Wolf), how and why we retrieve memory (Proust), the way we process visual stimuli (Cezanne), and the fifth element of taste (Escoffier and the discovery of umami). And while his arguments are thoughtful and do a lot to show that the insights of artists are valuable, I had a couple of issues with the book. First, his language is WAY too flowery, and several of his paragraphs are merely the same statements said in a different way - this could have been an even shorter book. And these don't make it more understandable - at some points he borders on the inane. For example: "If music is not ambiguous then it expresses nothing, and if it expresses something then it has only expressed the absence of certainty." What? Second, and more fundamentally, he looks to neuroscience as the arbiter of WHAT IS TRUE. All of these artists ended up being right, in some way, about the way we do things. But it's impossible to know which artist was right at the time (Realists, impressionists, post-impressionists, cubists, etc.?) until neuroscientists tested the hypotheses and built a framework from which to explore the idea. This idea that artists know better than scientists is sprinkled throughout the text, and while in some instances this can be so, the only way to know is to do the science. Sorry - soapboxed it.
Anyway, if you like science about artistic stuff, or how to relate science to the arts, this is a good book to read, especially if you don't mind it being a little repetitive and a little overwrought.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jun 09, 2012 Keith Kendall rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychology, philosophy, biography

A set of interesting biographies about 8 memorable people.

Since I recently finished Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life by George Elliot, I found chapter 2 about George Elliot especially interesting as also chapter 2 where we eventually learn that there are really 5 kinds of taste buds and not just four.

My initial reaction to Chapters 6, 7, and 8 is that I won't bother with Stravinski, Gertrude Stein or Virginia Woolf. But having finished each of those chapters, my initial reaction was proba...more

like · see review

Nov 14, 2010 Brynn rated it 5 of 5 stars

"But measurement is always imperfect, and explanations are easy to invent." (3)

Jane Austen: "Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken." (25)

George Eliot: "all meanings depend on the key of interpretation." (44)

George Eliot: "the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than anyone would imagine." (50)

"Impressions are always incomplete and require a d...more

like · see review

Apr 17, 2011 Sophie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, misc-non-fiction, library-book

The idea behind this is that artists first thought of ideas that neuroscience only afterwards 'discovered'. E.g. Proust first set out that memory is transient and can be recalled randomly by, for example, the taste of a madeleine, something that was found to be true later by experiment.

Does that sound a bit simplistic to you? It did to me. And it was. Some of the science explanations are a bit patronising in their dumbing down and a lot of the connections are a bit far-fetched. It's an interesti...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Brain Science Pod...: Can the Arts inform Neuroscience?	5	23	Jul 15, 2012 07:58am

combine
Other Editions (21)

More editions...

Genres

Non Fiction

189 users

Science

180 users

Psychology

55 users

Biology > Neuroscience

43 users

Philosophy

34 users

Art

26 users

History

21 users

Literature

9 users

Book Club

8 users

Neuroscience > Brain

8 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Books by Jonah Lehrer

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Proust Was a Neur...

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Proust Was a Neuroscie...

“Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination. Unfortunately, our current culture subscribes to a very narrow definition of truth. If something can’t be quantified and calculated, then it can’t be true. Because this strict scientific approach has explained so much, we assume that it can explain everything. But every method, even the experimental method, has limits. Take the human mind. Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces. What science forgets is that this isn’t how we experience the world. (We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.” — 4 people liked it

“Suffering through his classes, the young Igor steeped himself in angst. He would later describe his childhood as 'a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.” — 3 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Proust Was a Neuroscientist
avg rating	preview: Proust Was a Neuroscientist Goodreads rating: 3.88 (3608 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/822367.Proust_Was_a_Neuroscientist?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347246431l/822367.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/822367.Proust_Was_a_Neuroscientist?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer[/url]

Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website