Really fascinating book, I think I'll have to go back and listen to the whole thing again. Lehrer brings together so many disparate fields and explains them so clearly. I just loved every chapter but especially those on music and art. He explains why we hate the avante guarde and then learn to love it, why music touches us and so many other things. ( )

{This review is being written several months after finishing the book.} The author's main thesis is that many people in the arts "knew" aspects of human nature that are only recently being scientifically proved by neuroscientists. I believe the author makes a very good case and provides many interesting facts and summaries of recent results in neuroscience and also the artists (Whitman, Eliot, Escoffier, Proust, Cezanne Stravinsky, Stein, and Woolf). ( )

Thesis is silly. But it's an okay collection of ruminations on science and culture. I think the writer and the readers would be better off if Lehrer hadn't pretended he was making an extended argument about art anticipating science, or whatever.

Pros: a very good angle; interesting writing; a broad range of knowledge
Cons: it fades off from the middle of each chapter; not much original materials and insights compared to what the author has set off for from the beginning; becoming another history book of the both worlds (art/science) rather than real synergy insights; the attack on pinker and etc. in the last chapter is not convincing at all (the biggest let down of the book). ( )

A very interesting book that is also very well-written. At the end of the day though it was too long winded for me to get really engrossed in it. ( )

Explores the relationship of artists and scientists in the exploration of truth in regards to how our brain interacts with the world around us. My favorite chapters were Eliot/Freedom, Escoffier/Taste, Proust/Memory, Cezanne/Sight, and Woolf/Self. ( )

A playful, fascinating little book that weaves the history of scientific studies of consciousness through the work of eight pathbreaking artists. The author's description of the work and milieu of artists who were initially rejected - Stravinsky, Stein, and Cezanne - is particularly insightful when related to our latest neurological understandings. For example, he explains how we create meaning from photons and the five neural layers of vision when discussing Cezanne. Neuroscience and the relation between thoughts and the body is used to examine Whitman. Neurogenesis and the creation of memory illuminates Marcel Proust's inquiry into the transcendent nature of memory. Eliot collided with her time's understandings of biological determinism and evolutionary theory. And so forth ... the author's writing becomes the most rhapsodic when he describes Escoffier's advances in cooking.

A true pleasure to read. I'm trying not to hold it against the author that he's only 25. (punk) ( )

Still reading, but is rather interesting thus far. Whether or not his thesis is valid, it is an interesting perspective as well as an interesting introduction to various issues/concepts in neuroscience.

Dry, dry, dry. Which is sad, 'cause the subject itself is an interesting intersection. ( )

This work ties in with the Cave Painting project. Lehrer has studied science, theology and art, and sees them as responses to Mystery. However, he takes the position that "science is not the only path to knowledge". Incomprehensibly, he claims that "In fact, where the brain is concerned, art got there first."

Apercu: Summary of brain studies and the "new model" which has emerged: Regenerative, dynamic. Discoveries of eight Artists traced against that model: Proust - altering memory; George Eliot - brain malleability; August Escoffier -- the fifth taste (umami); Cezanne - illusion/sight; Gertrude Stein - deep structure of language {now rejected by Chomsky himself and never "scientific"}; Virginia Woolf - character shifts; Stravinsky - dissonance, fracture. Calls for "a pragmatic view of the truth".