Proust Was a Neuroscientist Review

I found this book disappointing. It initially appeared to be a consideration of the interaction between the arts and sciences and how the two fields complemented or contributed to one another. Instead it presents a group of artists who apparently had ideas about the mind, the brain, how we sense things, who we are as humans and contrasts these ideas with prevalent scientific ideas at the time. Since the artists' ideas were new and untested scientifically, they were frequently dismissed by some scientists. The conclusion - science was blind to the brilliant new ideas of artists, frequently willfully so.

There are several things that bother me about this book. The author necessarily simplifies the science he discusses, primarily neuroscience, frequently to the point of being inaccurate and several times incorrect. Given that, it made me wonder how often the ideas of the artists were portrayed inaccurately, or incorrectly. I found it difficult to trust in what was written about the arts and artists.

The author tends to make the scientific culture monolithic and unyielding. There are certainly scientists who are rigid and arrogant in their thinking, but many (most) who understand that what is known today will be modified extensively tomorrow. Even though he worked for a time in an outstanding neuroscience lab, the author does not seem to have a good grasp of the scientific method. While he clearly trumpets its limitations, it is not in the context of understanding the method itself.

The adjective and verbs applied to science are frequently negative, signaling who is wrong and who is right before the discussion begins. Terms such as inane, fashionable obsession, ransacked, derision, typically stubborn are applied to science or scientists and not to artists. How do you trust someone who biases the argument from the beginning?

It appears a major theme in this book is an argument against science as religion - the belief in the untestable hypothesis that science will ultimately be able to explain everything humans do and think and feel on a molecular basis. It is an important argument to make but the way the book is written, the author is preaching to the choir and is not going to convince anyone who holds the opposite belief or, more importantly, is not sure.

I give the author credit for being thought provoking and interesting. I just wish he would have written a balanced discussion so in the end he would be believable. I thought it was ironic that in the last chapter (Coda), he writes about the idea and failure of a third milieu in which the arts and the sciences could engage in a cross-dialog and draw from each other, and he then criticizes those who took this idea and used it as a prop for a rigid defense of the ultimate triumph of science over all. The irony is that the criticism he levies against the science writers, while accurate, could be used against him from the opposite angle for the entirety of this book. Frustrating.Get more detail about Proust Was a Neuroscientist.