Not long after I wrote this post linking to Isaac Chotiner's negative review of Johah Lehrer's Imagine and its "fetishization of brain science," Lehrer was forced to resign from The New Yorker for fabricating Bob Dylan quotes. A lot has been written about the meaning of Lehrer's transgression; but I was bothered less by the distortion of relatively trivial facts than the use to Continue Reading …
Science-Based Anti-Intellectualism
On a regular basis someone publishes a book in which they attempt to apply neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, or the social sciences to questions that the humanities are actually better equipped to address. As a consequence, such authors typically end up dressing up their embarrassingly sophomoric musings related to philosophy, literature, and culture in the trappings of Continue Reading …