Proust was a neuroscientist
by Jonah Lehrer · first published 2007
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3HN commenters
2011–2025first – last mentioned
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"Quick book recommendation for you. I finished reading this about a week ago and it's still lingering in my thoughts. I always intend to blog the dogeared pages, but never get around to it. In a nutshell: Jonah Lehrer explores how artists from various disciplines and eras have pre-empted neuroscience by intuiting or reflecting particular parts of brain function. Lovely, accessible, thoughtful, a science book that embraces art and acknowledges the role it has to play in reflecting human experience. Perhaps most importantly, it also fully acknowledges the uncertainty at the heart of a lot of sci
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I found David Eagleman's books, especially Incognito, to be really good introduction to how the brain works. "Proust was a Neuroscientist" is a delightful look at how non-scientists throughout history (artists, dancers, writers) have intuited truths about how parts of the brain work that have since been proven by science.
on “Ask HN: What are some of the best books you’ve read about memory and the brain?” ↗Second that. Check out his Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Great framing, great idea...but in the end, no, Proust was not a neuroscientist, and the same goes for most else Lehrer has to say. The whole premise of this piece doesn't make sense to me - coffee,…
on “Bother Me, I'm Thinking ” ↗Absolutely mind/world-expanding. Thanks for sharing. The Swedish version reminds me of (the now "disgraced" but his Proust book is cool journalist) Lehrer's chapter on Virginia Woolfe in Proust Was a Neuroscientist, where he claims that "attention _is_ consciousness" in Woolf's then-novel stream of consciousness style in To the Lighthouse.
on “Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself” ↗