Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Is science the only path to knowledge? In this sparkling and provocative book, Jonah Lehrer explains that when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first. Taking a group of celebrated writers, painters and composers, Lehrer shows us how artists have discovered truths about the human mind – real, tangible truths – that science is only now rediscovering. We learn, for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory; how George Eliot understood the brain’s malleability; 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. It’s a riveting tale of art trumping science again and again.

Reviews of Proust Was a Neuroscientist

If all science books were as successful in bridging the divide between art and science as this one is, there would no longer be a divide to bridge. – Sunday Times