I recently purchased this book based on some of positive reviews I had read on Amazon.com and elsewhere, and because I read Mr. Lehrer’s blog. I now wish that I had followed the negative reviews. Almost immediately it seemed that Mr. Lehrer was stretching various scientific evidence and theories very thin to match up to his thesis that some artists predicted scientific breakthroughs (such as Proust). I tried to dismiss these instances as artistic fancy, but when the author including information about DNA that is 10 to 15 years out-of-date and flat out wrong, I just could not continue. If Mr. Lehrer is going to compare hard science with art then he should have researched the fields about which he writes, or had better fact-checking of the book.
I ultimately quit this book because while I read a lot about science, and was able to cross-check that things in this book were wrong according to what experts in the field wrote, I am not a scientist nor am I a literary scholar. If Mr. Lehrer is misrepresenting, lying, or simply so bad at science writing that he is giving me bad information, how am I to know? Long story short: Mr. Lehrer lost my trust. I read books by good authors, that are often scientists, to learn more about the world. I *trust* that their professional credentials mean that they will provide me with accurate information. I don’t need to unintentionally poison my mind with outright incorrect information.
