Deviate
The Science of Seeing Differently

Quotes

"Deviate is an entertaining read that raises fascinating questions about how we perceive the world. Aside from being an accomplished scientist, Lotto is a talented writer who uses illustrative examples and visual experiments to dazzle and to teach."—The Washington Post

"Provocative...a radical philosophy of perception...balanced by many astute observations."—Nature

"Beau Lotto's Deviate is the beginning of a conversation-with yourself. Based on my years working at Pixar and with Tibetan Buddhist meditation masters, Beau is on exactly the right track for using neuroscience to understand the mechanisms that keep us stuck and the power of paying attention to the mind. And he does it with an infectious enthusiasm that cannot help but draw the reader into this engaging material."—Lawrence Levy, former CFO of Pixar Animation Studiosand author of To Pixar and Beyond

"Lotto, a brilliant neuroscientist, explains why our perceptual hardwiring makes it difficult for us to live with uncertainty...His insights help us understand the mindset and talents-like asking great questions-that can help people live in the future as opposed to the past. Deviate shows us how to reengineer our brains and prepare ourselves to lead and innovate in our organizations and lives."—Linda Hill, Professor of Business Administration atHarvard Business School and author of Becoming a Manager

"Deviate is a more accessible, fun, interactive version of Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow-involving the reader in building an active understanding of the value of relying on perception as well as reason, and doing so in enjoyable ways. Beau Lotto is a powerful storyteller who bridges peer-reviewed science and the creative arts in rare ways to offer actionable insights."—David Rowan, Editor-in-Chief Wired (UK edition)

"[A] sprightly look into the nature of things.... Among Lotto's most valuable contributions to our lay understanding of perception and thinking is his formulation of perception as an 'ecology,' meaning 'the relation of things to the things around them, and how they influence each other....' Lotto's provocative investigation into the mysterious workings of the mind will make readers just that much smarter."—Kirkus Reviews

"Beau Lotto is one of the most creative scientists I know, and his passion for introducing neuroscience to the public ranks him among those rare communicators like Carl Sagan whose ideas can change peoples' thinking. At a time when many neuroscientists are pursuing the mindless goal of mapping all the connections in the human brain, Beau is right on target in his conviction that science advances by doubting the conventional wisdom and asking simple questions in a novel way."—Dale Purves, Professor Emeritus at the Duke Institutefor Brain Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences

"Beau Lotto is the ideal writer for a popular book about the neuroscience of perception. He has already proved himself to be an immensely engaging and daring populariser of science. Above all, he is well-established neuroscientist who really knows what he is talking about. In this book he will convince you that our every-day experience of seeing is far more mysterious and exciting than it seems."—Chris Frith, Professor of Neuroscience at UniversityCollege London

"In a brilliant and skillful way Beau Lotto pulls the rug from under our naive view of reality-bit by bit. In reading this book, we discover how our conventional way of seeing, of perceiving reality, is incomplete and illusory. He begins to dismantle this illusion by showing us why we see the world the way we do, and in doing so he opens the curtain to a new beginning, a new beginning of seeing past our individual interpretation of reality, to recognize that others may surely have a different interpretation. In daring us to deviate Lotto encourages us to discover that compassion has a root that can be revealed through scientific insights."—Peter Baumann, Founder of Tangerine Dream

"In Deviate, Beau Lotto's remarkable research into human perception is crystallized into a series of astute explanations of how we experience reality. By bringing together an 'ecology of the senses' that goes beyond the mechanisms of the eye, Lotto's ingenious account of the brain's perceptive evolution arrives at an extraordinary proposition of how we can go beyond our current ways of seeing. Following Olafur Eliasson's words that 'what we have in common is that we are different,' Deviate unravels the bind to our human history in order to foresee a radically different future for a reconfigured, individual perception. It is a brilliant book!"—Hans Ulrich Obrist, Director of the Serpentine Gallery(London)