Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Proust Was a Neuroscientist
by Jonah Lehrer

Proust Was a Neuroscientist
List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $12.95
You Save: $11.05 (46%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $8.45 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Jonah Lehrer
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-11-01
ISBN: 0618620109
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Book Reviews of Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Book Review: I LOVED IT!
Summary: 5 Stars

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!

Summary of Proust Was a Neuroscientist

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
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 C?zanne 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.

General Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Neuro-Musico-Fanatico
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music ImageThe Cognitive Neuroscience of Music
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-10-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $61.34
Price in other shops: $79.50
On Intelligence ImageOn Intelligence
by Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee
Published: 2004-10-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.55
Price in other shops: $25.00
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain ImageMusicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
by Oliver Sacks
Knopf; Published: 2007-10-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops: $26.00
Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means ImageLinked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means
by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Plume; Published: 2003-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops: $15.00
Proust Was a Neuroscientist ImageProust Was a Neuroscientist
by Jonah Lehrer
Houghton Mifflin; Published: 2007-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.19
Price in other shops: $24.00
The Quantum Brain: The Search for Freedom and the Next Generation of Man ImageThe Quantum Brain: The Search for Freedom and the Next Generation of Man
by Jeffrey Satinover
Wiley; Published: 2002-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.25
Price in other shops: $15.95
Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation (Bradford Books) ImageSweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation (Bradford Books)
by David Huron
The MIT Press; Published: 2008-03-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.56
Price in other shops: $20.00
Similar Books and other products
The Principles of Uncertainty ImageThe Principles of Uncertainty
by Maira Kalman
Penguin Press HC, The; Published: 2007-10-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.98
Price in other shops: $29.95
The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language ImageThe First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language
by Christine Kenneally
Viking Adult; Published: 2007-07-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.21
Price in other shops: $26.95
The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War ImageThe Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War
by Graham Robb
W. W. Norton; Published: 2007-10-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.13
Price in other shops: $27.95
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body ImageYour Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
by Neil Shubin
Pantheon; Published: 2008-01-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.92
Price in other shops: $24.00
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (James H. Silberman Books) ImageThe Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (James H. Silberman Books)
by Norman Doidge
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2007-12-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops: $16.00
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century ImageThe Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
by Alex Ross
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2007-10-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.04
Price in other shops: $30.00
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read ImageHow to Talk About Books You Haven't Read
by Pierre Bayard
Bloomsbury USA; Published: 2007-10-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.45
Price in other shops: $19.95
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain ImageProust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
by Maryanne Wolf
Harper; Published: 2007-09-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.41
Price in other shops: $25.95
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature ImageThe Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
by Steven Pinker
Viking Adult; Published: 2007-09-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.49
Price in other shops: $29.95
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain ImageMusicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
by Oliver Sacks
Knopf; Published: 2007-10-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops: $26.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories