PROUST AND NEUROSCIENCE BY AN EXPERT. I posted earlier on Proust and Happiness Psychology. This was a layman’s reaction to reading STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS by Daniel Gilbert. In reading about Milton Friedman just now I came across the fact that Jonah Lehrer will be publishing a book entitled PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST later this year. Jonah Lehrer has a blog called The Frontal Cortex which discusses Proust and neuroscience. He says, “I actually argue that Proust anticipated some fundamental discoveries in modern neuroscience. But he wasn’t the only artist with prophetic powers. I also argue that Walt Whitman, George Eliot, August Escoffier, Paul Cezanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf (basically a Who’s Who of modernism) also anticipated the shiny new facts of neuroscience.” You can imagine how much I am looking forward to this book.
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What a perfect book for you! I’m looking forward to hearing your reactions to it when it comes out. Back when I was in BSCS I kept hoping we would spend more time on how the brain functions. Also, I love the idea of artists and other creative types anticipating scientific discoveries based on their powers of observation and use of anecdotal evidence.
My Eastern Religions teacher posited that Buddhism was an early form of neuroscience, with its delving into the concept of the mind and self-consciousness. A little while later I find that someone’s written a book on the very same premise.
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