Steve's review
Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer (Goodreads author!)
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 repeats his distaste for scientific reductionism. By the final chapter, there was no need to describe his beliefs about reductionism that had become clear from the preceding 8 chapters.
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 repeats his distaste for scientific reductionism. By the final chapter, there was no need to describe his beliefs about reductionism that had become clear from the preceding 8 chapters.
