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Proust Was a Neuroscientist
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
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Publisher's summary
Taking a group of artists - a painter, a poet, a chef, a composer, and a handful of novelists - Lehrer shows how each one discovered an essential truth about the mind that science is only now rediscovering.
We learn, for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory; how George Eliot discovered the brain's malleability; how the French chef Escoffier identified umami (the fifth taste); how Cézanne worked out the subtleties of vision; and how Gertrude Stein exposed the deep structure of language - a full half-century before the work of Noam Chomsky and other linguists. It's the ultimate tale of art trumping science.
More broadly, Lehrer shows that there's a cost to reducing everything to atoms and acronyms and genes. Measurement is not the same as understanding, and this is what art knows better than science.
An ingenious blend of biography, criticism, and first-rate science writing, Proust Was a Neuroscientist urges science and art to listen more closely to each other, for willing minds can combine the best of both, to brilliant effect.
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A breath of fresh air!
- By Michael on 02-19-14
By: Denis Dutton
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An Anthropologist on Mars
- Seven Paradoxical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his bestsellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.
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SACKS IS AN ABSOLUTE JOY !!
- By Jeff on 09-22-13
By: Oliver Sacks
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A General Theory of Love
- By: Richard Lannon MD, Thomas Lewis MD, Fari Amini MD
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This original and lucid account of the complexities of love and its essential role in human well-being draws on the latest scientific research. Three eminent psychiatrists tackle the difficult task of reconciling what artists and thinkers have known for thousands of years about the human heart with what has only recently been learned about the primitive functions of the human brain.
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Great subject matter-hard to listen to
- By Laurel on 07-22-19
By: Richard Lannon MD, and others
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On Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee
- Narrated by: Jeff Hawkins, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.
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Epiphany
- By James on 03-14-05
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
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A Beginner’s Guide to Reality
- Exploring Our Everyday Adventures in Wonderland
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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A unique fusion of philosophy and metaphysics set against the backdrop of contemporary culture. Have you ever wondered if the world is really there when you're not looking? We tend to take the reality of our world very much for granted. This book will lead you down the rabbit hole in search of something we can point to, hang our hats on, and say this is real.
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A real great listen on the nature of reality
- By Patrick Mabry, Jr. on 07-30-14
By: Jim Baggott
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The Mind of God
- Neuroscience, Faith, and a Search for the Soul
- By: Dr. Jay Lombard
- Narrated by: David Acord
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Is there a God? It's a question billions of people have asked since the dawn of time. You would think by now we'd have a satisfactory, universal answer. No such luck...or maybe we do and we just need to look in the right place. For Dr. Jay Lombard that place is the brain, and more importantly the mind, that center of awareness and consciousness that creates reality. In The Mind of God, Dr. Lombard employs case studies from his own behavioral neurology practice to explore the spiritual conundrums that we all ask ourselves.
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Keenly insightful
- By Rick Smith on 09-30-19
By: Dr. Jay Lombard
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The Age of Insight
- The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
- By: Eric R. Kandel
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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A brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind - our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions - and how mind and brain relate to art.
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Worth the listen
- By Amazon Customer on 01-28-19
By: Eric R. Kandel
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When Einstein Walked with Gödel
- Excursions to the Edge of Thought
- By: Jim Holt
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot.
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A good overview of scientific theory
- By MJ Walters on 09-11-18
By: Jim Holt
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Riveted
- The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe
- By: Jim Davies
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Professor Jim Davies's fascinating and highly accessible book, Riveted, reveals the evolutionary underpinnings of why we find things compelling. Drawing on work from philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, economics, computer science, and biology, Davies offers a comprehensive explanation to show that in spite of the differences between the many things that we find compelling, they have similar effects on our minds and brains.
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Fun and excellent listen!
- By Alejandro Franco on 04-13-18
By: Jim Davies
What listeners say about Proust Was a Neuroscientist
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Curious Artist Librarian
- 08-06-12
So delightful. I re-listened
Would you listen to Proust Was a Neuroscientist again? Why?
Well, I love Jonah Lehrer, and he has a great way of telling a story.
What did you like best about this story?
It is packed with thought provoking ideas that lead to further reading [listening too].
Have you listened to any of Dan John Miller’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No, I only wish the author had been reading, as he did for Imagine. That was terrific. This is fine, just not as good as Lehrer.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
It made me have a 180 on my opinion of Gertrude Stein, for one thing. It made me tell people stories from it, as Imagine did, and recommend it avidly.
Any additional comments?
I do not care a fig about the supposition about Lehrer's Dylan quotes, although I am sure that he does. I think he is a remarkable story-teller and I am very sorry he resigned from the New Yorker. These little details do not matter in the service of the high-level thinking that he conveys in such plain English in his books. I am still recommending this book to everyone.
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Overall
- Mark D. Jones
- 03-10-09
Excellent Book
Not sure what the others are griping about in regards to the narrator.
The book is completely fascinating, connecting some dots that I had already thought about. Amazing how it dovetails nicely with the book "On Intelligence". If you are fascinated by the mind, by how we think and perceive then this is definitely a book you want to listen to.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Diane
- 03-21-11
Art & Science
Lehrer's premise that the arts have anticipated many of neuroscience's recent discoveries about the workings of human perception are explored in this book through an examination of the works of a number of artists, composers and authors. It offers some fascinating insights into both science and works of art but unfortunately it becomes redundant and tedious as the author repeats many of his points again and again throughout the book. Even though the book is relatively short, it would have benefited from more editing.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Joe
- 11-21-08
Audio Evolution
This new production of Proust Was a Neuroscientist published by Brilliance Audio is an able replacement to the previously published edition by the now on-haitus publishing venture, Audio Evolution. Surely the franco-philes who savaged the first edition will give this new recording, narrated by Dan John Miller, a fairer hearing than the first.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kevin C. Kenna
- 06-11-21
Really Makes You Think
I listen to this novel while hiking through the hills in Southern Idaho. at this point in history I believe that everyone who's pondering existence or the universe itself should read or listen to this book.
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- Caroline
- 05-22-09
Art intersects science
Where art meets its application in the sinewy sinapses. Why do we hate the avante garde, learn to like it, then get bored by it and thirst for something new. Why does music move us, stock smell so good and art that approximates beat the exactitude of photography? I'm absoltely enthralled by every chapter, I think I'll just have to listen to the whole thing through at least one more time. Lehrer is surely a genius for bringing together so many disparate topics and explaining them using the latest knowledge of how our brains function.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Cheri
- 07-24-10
Jarring narration
This fascinating book is almost ruined by a jarring narration that demonstrates a serious lack of awareness of syntax.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Williamb
- 09-05-19
Innovative Perspective
This perspective comes from a literary angle with science as the background. While I didn't' find every interpretation as valid as most, this inventive way to look at scientific understanding from non scientist or lay scientist description is inspiring. How we see science when we lack the details of the yet undiscovered truths comes together in retrospect. I really enjoyed this book.
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- alvin
- 07-28-16
The unlimited creative mysterious mind.
Conjured thoughts have always preceded all experiments of all the sciences and often know the correct results and often are totally wrong.
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- Laurie
- 12-09-08
Great book, unpleasant narration
I don't know, is it me? I found this book fascinating but could never get used to the narrator's annoying singsong and stopped with about 2/5 of the book to go. I will look for it in paperback so I can finish it.
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5 people found this helpful