UPDATE–WAS PROUST A NEUROSCIENTIST?

UPDATE–WAS PROUST A NEUROSCIENTIST?Daniel Engbar has a harsh review in Slate of Jonathan Lehrer’s new book PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST (which I posted on here). Engbar argues that Lehrer overstates his case by saying that the artists and writers that Lehrer discusses had discovered certain phenomena: “Neuroscience has no need for originality: The grand project of the field is to explain the well-known phenomena of consciousness….” Engbar says that Proust is quoted by neuroscientists “not because he discovered something new about the mechanism of memory…[but]… because he gave beautiful voice to the phenomenon….” I think Engbar is being overly strict. Clearly Proust and the other creative figures were not really neuroscientists and it may be an exaggeration to treat them as discoverers. But dramatizing a phenomenon that neuroscientists confirm should be worthy of note. As a separate matter, Engbar has some very interesting things to say about what an important figure William James was.