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JONAHS_COOKIE
January 15, 2012
"Proust was a Neuroscientist"
(2007) by Jonah Lehrer
A book written to persuade people BROCKMANS_THIRD
of a scientific mind-set that
there is something of value in the Essentially, Lehrer is
arts, in particular in "modern out to counter the Third
art". It attempts to demonstrate Culture movement of John
that there are many cases where Brockman (edge.org) and
the avant-garde of the arts friends, which often
anticipated current scientific seems to be about
conclusions. elevating the sciences
over the humanities.
Lehrer's method is to describe
the thoughts of some famous Yes indeed, Lehrer is one
writers, muscians and artists; of *those*: he's wants to
he then asserts that these bridge the two cultures.
thoughts were later confirmed
by some scientific research; TWO_CULTS
which he also describes.
BIBLES
To my eye, Lehrer does a good
job in discussing the art and
a good job of discussing the Lehrer actually understands the
science, but the connections avant-garde artists of modern
he tries to draw between them days of yore, which is definitely
are often debatable, and appreciated in these aggressively
usually poorly argued. low-brow times.
And if the members of "the scientific
And it's hardly a surprise culture" aren't always exactly low-brow
if some artists have come up in their artistic tastes, I think they
with some insightful guesses do have a tendency towards hard-core
that have turned out to be traditionalism (James Joyce? Pitui!).
correct... science is about
sorting out the insightful Daniel Engber (Slate, Nov. 26, 2007
guesses that are right from "Proust Wasn't a Neuroscientist")
the insightful guesses that disagrees somewhat on this point,
are wrong. commenting that in his experience
neuroscience lectures invariably
include Proust references.
[link]
Problems with Lehrer:
He tends to see absolute
confirmation in some very
ambiguous cases.
He never considers contrary
possibilities very seriously.
Selection bias: He picks cases
where artists were right, and IN_CONTRAST
ignores ones where they were
wrong...
He includes no examples
of scientists who take DYSON
the humanities seriously.
Originally, at least, I was
willing to shrug off some Maybe it's too bad that the
intellectual sloppiness on standards are so low for
Lehrer's part: this kind of work... but
there's no training programs
I think the Poet's Licence to speak of for generalists,
applies to writers trying and little reward for doing
to breath philosophical the work.
meaning into scientific
fact... the standards of The people doing it tend to
proof are different than be people like Jonah Lehrer
they would be for actual who by his own admission
scientific work. wasn't really good enough
to do something else.
"Interesting and
not-obviously-wrong" JONAHS_TECHNICAL
may be good enough.
(And maybe I was being too nice
to him. More recently he's
This is a fun, interesting book, gotten in trouble for fabricating
but not a great one, and maybe a Bob Dylan quote to support
not even a good one. his thesis about Dylan...)
Nevertheless, in an odd way I
think it succeeds in spite of
it's many problems. I note that one relatively
harsh critic comments in an
aside that they were suprised
to find themselves enjoying
reading about Virginia Woolf.
Simon Ings, Guardian UK, Feb 2, 2011
[link]
Going into some of Lehrer's
problems in more detail:
I question Lehrer's
dichotomy between
phrenology and the
opponents of the
mind-body dichotmy...
JONAHS_WHITMAN And yet, it's interesting
to read this story of
Whitman and his
relationship to other
intellectuals of the day.
Similarly, Lehrer's
understanding of
music seems weak in But ah, the celebrity drama
his discussion of of Stravinsky provoking
Stravinsky... riots, but eventually
triumphant...
JONAHS_STRAVINSKY
[link]
Daniel Engber (mentioned above)
points out that the discovery of
"adult neurogenesis" has little But isn't it
bearing on the doctrine of Free interesting to
Will (George Elliot's variety, read Lehrer's
or anyone elses)... thumbnail sketch
of George Elliot
And the story he tells attacking Herbert
Actually, it seems about how evidence for Spencer (her
like a recurrent neurogenesis was ignored former lover)?
problem: Lehrer is for a long time because
convinced that it contradicted the
cellular plasticity standard wisdom... that's
is deeply bound-up pretty interesting, too,
in mental plasticity. isn't it?
But you know,
before the first
was established, Learning used to be
we didn't assume assumed to be about PLASTIC_JONAH
the second didn't shuffling connections of
happen. neurons. To some extent,
maybe that's really
true... certainly, Lehrer
mentions no research
showing otherwise.
Suddenly, I think I may
recognize The Syndrome!
This is an intellectual-
history-with-axe-to-grind. GRINDING_HEADS
As is so often the
case, the details are
interesting, though the
project is flawed.
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