Ant McWatt said to Dave (dmb): ...Maybe that IS true in some cases but it would need going back to first hand sources to check or, at the very least, referring to a writer that you can trust - like William James. That Proust was William James' brother-in-law is a telling connection in this regard. As is your suggested re-titling of the book!
dmb says: Actually it was the reviewer - a neuroscientist named Daniel Engber - who suggested that, "a better title would have been 'James Was a Psychologist'." I'd like to say the idea was mine, but that whole paragraph is a quote from his article in the online magazine "Slate". http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2007/11/proust_wasnt_a_neuroscientist.single.html "Proust turns up so often in neuroscience talks and papers not because he discovered something new about the mechanism of memory," Engber concludes. "The biologists quote him because he gave beautiful voice to the phenomenon itself. They use his words to remind us: This is our experience; this is what we're talking about. Now let's figure out how it works." "Many of the breakthroughs attributed to the artists profiled in the book seem to have been prefigured—or even stated outright—by contemporary theorists like William James. Indeed, the architect of American psychology lurks in almost every chapter: In a discussion of Cezanne's discovery that the mind fabricates an image of the world from our sensory impressions, Lehrer quotes from James' Pragmatism, saying substantially the same thing; when he explains how Woolf discovered our splintered consciousness, it's James again, on the "mutations of the self"; a chapter on Gertrude Stein's discovery of the language instinct begins with her work in William James' laboratory at Harvard; and so on. (For a discussion of James' considerable influence on Proust, you'll have to look elsewhere.) Midway through the book, I started to wonder if a better title would have been James Was a Psychologist." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2013 01:13:41 +0000 > Subject: Re: [MD] Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer > DMB said: > > Jonah Lehrer was a journalist, a science journalist, until his fall from > grace. He was fired - and effectively bounced out of the profession in a > plagiarism scandal. Even before his cheating was discovered, his books were > harshly criticized by actual scientists. > > There's an old review (11th November 2007) of Jonah Lehrer's "Proust Was A > Neuroscientist" in Slate for example. The reviewer discredits the book's main > premise. Here's the premise in Jonah Lehrer's own words: "We now know that > Proust was right about memory, Cezanne was uncannily accurate about the > visual cortex, Stein anticipated Chomsky, and Woolf pierced the mystery of > consciousness; modern neuroscience has confirmed these artistic intuitions." > > The reviewer undermines this premise by pointing out that these artists > weren't scientists and did not discover things either. They were getting > their ideas from elsewhere. (If memory serves, Proust was William James's > brother-in-law.) > > "Many of the breakthroughs attributed to the artists profiled in the book > seem to have been prefigured—or even stated outright—by contemporary > theorists like William James. Indeed, the architect of American psychology > lurks in almost every chapter: In a discussion of Cezanne's discovery that > the mind fabricates an image of the world from our sensory impressions, > Lehrer quotes from James' Pragmatism, saying substantially the same thing; > when he explains how Woolf discovered our splintered consciousness, it's > James again, on the "mutations of the self"; a chapter on Gertrude Stein's > discovery of the language instinct begins with her work in William James' > laboratory at Harvard; and so on. (For a discussion of James' considerable > influence on Proust, you'll have to look elsewhere.) Midway through the book, > I started to wonder if a better title would have been James Was a > Psychologist." > > I don't if the book would illuminate the MOQ or not but this connection with > James does, at least, make the idea seem plausible. > > > Ant McWatt comments: > > Dave, > > Oh no, I thought the title of Lehrer's book was purely allegorical. > Otherwise, yes, it sounds like he was stretching credibility with attributing > all these artists with intuitively knowing various scientific discoveries. > Maybe that IS true in some cases but it would need going back to first hand > sources to check or, at the very least, referring to a writer that you can > trust - like William James. That Proust was William James' brother-in-law is > a telling connection in this regard. As is your suggested re-titling of the > book! > > I wonder what Craig will make of all this? > > Anyway, it has reminded me that I really need to re-read my James. ("Bill, > you know it's been over a decade since our last stroll..."), > > In the meantime, many thanks for the pointers! > > Ant > > > . > > > > > > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
