Monthly Archives: November 2008

HOW NEUROSCIENCE SUPPORTS VIRGINIA WOOLF. Jonah Lehrer explains how neuroscience supports Virginia Woolf’s view that the mind is, as her character Mrs. Ramsay says, “always ‘merging and flowing and creating.’” Experiments show that short-term memory can hold an experience for … Continue reading →

THE SELF EMERGES BY PAYING ATTENTION. Jonah Lehrer illustrates Virginia Woolf’s view of the mind with a passage from TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. Mrs. Ramsay has stopped paying attention to the dinner table conversation, which is about mathematics. Her eyes drift … Continue reading →

COMPETING SELVES OR SIMPLY A MYRIAD OF IMPRESSIONS? I posted recently on the research of psychologists who view the human mind as made up of competing selves. Jonah Lehrer writes in PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST that Virginia Woolf‘s view was … Continue reading →

MODERNISM AND THE MIND—AND A BOOK RECOMMENDATION. Almost two years ago, I posted here on how Proust seemed to have anticipated some of the findings of behavioral psychologists described in Daniel Gilbert’s STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS. I then found out and … Continue reading →

THE WILL POWER OF A TRUE STOIC. The Sidestep blog posted here on a good example of the will power of a Stoic for whom an exception to a principle is unthinkable. The example comes from A MAN IN FULL … Continue reading →