Talk:The Man Who Tasted Shapes

What year was it first published?
A pretty important point I would have thought. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.7.145.161 (talk) 07:30, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This book was originally published 1993, see https://books.google.fi/books/about/The_Man_Who_Tasted_Shapes.html?id=ROvaAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y This page refers to a 2003 reprint (or 2nd edition)

J hakkinen (talk) 05:47, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

please use US edition?
Editors: The British edition shown here is out of print. Would you consider changing the details and image to the US edition? They are:


 * Help, please. When I used Special:Upload and entered image details, the saved page said The Man Who Tasted Shapes didn't exist. Hmmm.
 * The cover image is

The following may be useful:

NYT review of “Shapes” http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/23/science/when-people-see-a-sound-and-hear-a-color.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Times Higher Education review of Shapes: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=161766&sectioncode=30

Curt Suplee, science editor, The Washington Post.” http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/neur-sci/1993-November/012851.html

Review in James Joyce Hypermedia Studies: http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/archives/v8/main/essays.php?essay=munisteri Richard E. Cytowic (talk) 12:55, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Critical reception section
The Critical reception section reads like it should be printed on the book cover. Sentences from a positive review have been selectively edited to make them even more positive. Compare the original "Some may find his book too informal and personal, and may feel that in his attempt to popularise the science, he has gone too far into autobiography and speculation, and away from the empirical approach" to the edited "...Baron-Cohen suggests that, for some readers, the style of the book may be "too informal and personal"...". I think that the "critical reception" section in book articles generally contains criticisms or comments on the content of the book by other authors and researchers, if it exists at all. I'm sure this is a fine book, but WP isn't a promotional tool. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:08, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi DC, it seems like you are really raising two separate issues here. First, the editing is too slanted towards the pro side. To address that, we could always just add a bit more of what you quote here, or other sections of the review.  I do think that a critical reception section is important, and the Simon Baron-Cohen review is on, the whole, more positive than negative.  I was editing to try to give a flavor of that balance in the section that I added.  Second, you think the section is focused too much on the style, and not the content of the book. Maybe I was too hasty in my selection of passages from the review to include. There are other portions of the review, like Baron-Cohen's comment about Cytowic's specific limbic system hypothesis, that do focus on the content of the book, but given this is a popular audience book that popularizes Cytowic's scientific work, there is little new here scientifically.  It's not like The God Delusion that was intended to advance a strong position. Anyway, perhaps we should add more on this aspect of the review? Baron-Cohen is himself an author and researcher into synesthesia (see his bio page and also the synesthesia article), and as such, his book review does constitute comment on the content of the book, but it seems that my edits don't do that aspect justice. Edhubbard (talk) 17:01, 17 May 2009 (UTC)