The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

I agree with all the previous reviews of this remarkable book. As I was reading, I kept track of the specific elements of each of the hemispheres that McGilchrist cites in this well researched book. I thought I would share this with the readers: A very partial summary of the nature of the left hemisphere could be as follows: it has an emphasis on doing, on things mechanistic, of the "whatness" of things; it is interested purely in functions and can only see things in context. The LH is not interested in living things. It does not understand metaphor and deals with pieces of information but cannot see the gestalt of situations. It recognizes the familiar and is not the hemisphere that attends to the "new", therefore it searches for what it already understands to categorize and nail down, often with (another of its characteristics) an unreasonable certainty of itself. Remember, it can't observe anything outside of its own confines. Since it prefers the known, it attempts to repackage new information (if unaided by the RH) as familiar - a kind of re-presenting the experience. It positively prefers (and defends!) what it knows! The LH tends to deny discrepancies that do not fit its already generated schema of things. It creates "a sort of self-reflexive virtual world" according to McGilchrist. Additionally, it is "regional" and focuses narrowly. The metaphor for its structure is vertical. It brings an attention that isolates, fixes and makes things explicit by bringing it under the spotlight of attention. It helps us to be grounded and "in life", looks for repetition and commonality between things without which we would drift and be unable to understand our experiences since all would be continuously new. It is efficient in routine situations where things are predictable. Without benefit of the RH (seen in studies of people with hemispheric damage, for example), it also renders things inert, mechanical and lifeless.. But it allows us to "know" and learn and make things. The right hemisphere's emphasis is on process, on the "how", "the manner in which" or the "howness" as McGilchrist puts it. It is interested in "ways of being" which only living things have. I was amazed to learn that the RH does recognize one group of inanimate objects as belonging to the class of living entities, and that is musical instruments (!) It helps us resonate with other living beings and the natural world, seeing its ultimate interconnectedness. The RH can carefully see things out of their context, it is global rather than regional, is broad and flexible, and as mentioned above, understands metaphor. It sees the gestalt and the wholeness; it tolerates ambiguity and the unknown. Its structure metaphor is "horizontal"; it is spacious and helps us with enough distance so we can observe. In it, we experience the live, complex, embodied, world of individual, always unique beings, forever in flux, a net of interdependencies, forming and reforming wholes, a world with which we are deeply connected. The RH is responsible for every kind of attention: divided, vigilant, sustained, and alertness - except for "focused", the domain of the LH. It can direct attention to what comes to us "from the edges" of our awareness regardless of the hemisphere side. It alone detects new or novel experiences. It distinguishes old information from new better than the LH. Animals, like horses, perceive new and emotionally arousing stimuli with the left eye (which is governed by the RH). It is more capable of a frame shift; think "possibility"; it has flexibility when encountering the "new" and suppresses the immediate impulse to see it as "old". It actively watches for discrepancies, more like a "devil's advocate". It approaches certainty with caution and humility. It says "I wonder" or "it might be" when confronted with information. But it also, without the LH, would create an experience that was always unique, forever in motion and unpredictable. `'If all things flow, and there is never a repeated experience, then we can never step into the same river twice, and we would never be able to `know' anything." If nothing can ever be repeated, then nothing can be known. Is the result of this growing LH dominance over the RH an increasingly dehumanized society where mechanism, bureaucracy, obsession with structure and with "what" predominates over a concern for living things and beings and their interconnectedness? You will be immersed in this question throughout this remarkable book. While no doubt this book deepens our understanding of the brain and has vast implications for psychotherapy and the understanding of human psychology, it is far more than this. It isn't possible to read this book without a continuing awareness of our political system, the growing dominance of our corporations, the weak assumptions of war, and the uncomfortably growing sense of the "dehumanization" of our world.

The Master And His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, New, expanded edition, 2019, Yale University Press, by Iain McGilchrist (588 pages). This book consists of two collections of ideas: the first being a review of the functioning of the hemispheres of the brain, plus a broad overview relating this information to language, music, and the nature of knowledge itself. The second is an attempt to relate these ideas to still broader, historic and cultural trends in the western world. At first I was deeply impressed and grateful for all I was learning; but in the second part, I had a crisis of faith and became suspicious of the possibility of applying McGilchrist’s thesis generally. That said, I still recommend this work as a stimulating and educational consideration of the kind of creature we are. Why are brains divided at all? M tells us that the division seems to be important for all kinds of animals. Birds have one eye on the gravel, to find seeds, and the other on the sky, to watch for predators. Toads look at prey with one eye and other toads with the other. Horses study emotionally important stimuli with their right brains, and so on. People likewise have two kinds of attention, one global and one focused, seemingly served by the two halves of our brains. That the division of the brain has resulted in global attention on one side, the right, and focused on the other, the left, may well be, but it seems doubtful that this is why brains are divided. Rather, I would think, they are probably divided because the animals are bilaterally symmetric, and because nerve and muscle tend to evolve together. But this does not vitiate M’s thesis. He instructs us that attention is not just another cognitive function. It determines not only what we see but how we see it. A mountain might be one thing to a prospector, another to a painter, and yet another to a native who thinks it the home of the gods. Science purports to get us closer to reality with detachment, but this ‘view from nowhere’ is itself a value judgement. Attention is a ‘Way’ of looking that determines what we think. And the main idea of this book is that we are too focused: we are using our left brains too much. M thinks the two sides of the brain are involved in a power struggle. But sensory information is transferred, indicating cooperation, which is, of course elementary, and something he is well aware of. On the other hand, there is reduced motoneuron excitability on the opposite side from transcranial stimulation, so the two sides do seem to be competing at least some of the time for control. M would have us believe that each side is basically trying to shut the other up. He says that even though one side might be more efficient at a task, if the other gets started first it will likely prevail and proceed; and this situation can obtain even in simple tasks where one side is only 85 % as good at a job as the other. So in summary, there is a physical underpinning to the notion that one function of the corpus callosum is to inhibit the opposite side, but it’s not the only one, since normally the brain must be coordinated. The right hemisphere is bigger, longer and wider. There is a twisted look to the whole brain when seen from below, called Yakovlevian torque. This amounts to a protrusion of the right frontal lobe across the midline at the most anterior region, a bump called the frontal petalia. There is a corresponding bump on the left rear, where the occipital petalia intrudes onto the right side. M reminds us that, in neuroanatomy, bigger usually means busier, as for example, with the hippocampal enlargement in London taxi drivers (the hippocampus being the brain region primarily responsible for spatial maps). The right side has more white matter, myelin, making for faster communication. It uses norepinephrine (NE) more, while the left uses more dopamine. NE released on the right side, keeps neurons from fatiguing; i.e., they keep firing longer, and this is believed important for the right side’s predominance in vigilance. The left brain concerns itself with explicit details, hard facts and linear reasoning, the underpinnings of technology and science. Nietzsche apparently labeled this type of knowledge Apollonian. The second type, the province of the right brain, is implicit, intuitive and personal, concerned with vigilance and the big picture; it is not static but varying and a matter of degree. Nietzsche called this type, Dionysian. M’s thesis is that, while both sides are essential, the right is of primary importance. Initially, it was The Master, but the left side, its emissary, usurped it (an idea harkening to a story by Nietzsche, where an emperor had to find emissaries to deal with his expanding territory; eventually, he made a bad choice and the emissary took him away in chains.) Nietzsche called Socrates the first degenerate because he focused so heavily on reason; in Plato’s dialogues he led his students to believe they were mistaken when they encountered a paradox. The left side has no tolerance for paradox, even though modern mathematics and philosophy have evidently shown that all rational systems must come up against it. The Dionysian, right brain, by contrast, has no problem with such a development. The Dionysian perspective is well given by M’s quoting a couple of lines from Donne: ‘On a huge hill,/ cragged and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will/ Reach her, about must, and about must goe…’ This is a fat book and it has so many important ideas that I will now simply list a number of them as traits M ascribes to the two sides of the brain. There are also a couple of ideas that are amazing, things I had never thought of clearly, but which are clearly true. After listing these I’ll turn a critical eye toward what I consider M’s overreach and take him away in chains. Right: responsible for peripheral vision and for conjugate eye movements. Left: selective, macular, highly focused attention. The right brain is on the look out, open to what exists apart from ourselves; the left keeps our noses to the grindstone. The right can hold more information in memory and for longer times, making its perception of the whole better and suiting it for a grounding and integrating role. The proper order of events in perception, assuming that ideas go back and forth, is: right, left, right. Right: underpins humor, understands metaphor, integrates seemingly unrelated concepts. Left: understands cliché, but is too rigid and literal to make the broad connections necessary for humor or metaphor. Left: abstraction, decontextualization, categories, rules. Right: actual relations in the world. Left: amasses impersonal information which is in the public domaine. Right: knows actual, individual relationships in the world. the temporal lobe deals with personal and emotional information, is implicated in a tendency to sadness. Left: concerned with the fruit of human invention. Right: with what exists before us, after us and beyond us, Nature. “If I imagine myself in pain I use both, but your pain is in my right.” Patients with right frontal damage, but not left, become incapable of empathy. Pars opicularis, part of Broca’s area on left, contains mirror neurons that fire when we see someone else do something and imitate the finger movements. There is a corresponding area on the right. Only the right side imitates faces. Right frontal pole (orbitofrontal cortex): has stronger connection to the limbic system; is involved with experience of emotions; regulates hypothalamic-pituitary axis; regulates autonomic responses; exerts inhibitory control over emotional responses. It interprets facial expression and gesture and tone of voice, evaluating emotional expression. Left: responsible for anger, which is dopamine-supported. After winning, the left amygdala is activated; after losing, the right. Sadness, guilt and empathy go together as right-brain phenomena. Psychopaths have right frontal deficiencies. Right: has insight. ‘Aha!’ is in the right, anterior, superior temporal lobe and usually consists in seeing the incongruity of previous assumptions. Also, when predictions are difficult the right out-performs the left. Arithmetic: addition and subtraction are on the right; multiplication on the left, (where the tables are kept). Music: Left hemisphere damage that makes a person unable to speak may still allow him to sing the words of a song without difficulty. A Russian composer with a stroke on his left side composed as well as ever. In general, a remarkable ability to understand or perform music remains after left brain damage. Right: Underpins timbre and pitch, as well as more complicated rhythms, though simple rhythms are more broadly based. However, this apparently applies only to amateurs. Professionals have music more widely distributed; i.e., they have put more skill in the left side. The right brain’s responsibility for things new applies across all domains, even the learning of a musical instrument, and other new skills. Again, the left prioritizes what it knows. M’s many sources of knowledge include art, and he quotes one of his favorite art critics to the effect that a painting is not a thing: it is a way of seeing or knowing; if we appreciate it, we see ‘according to the painting.’ He is at least passingly sympathetic to genius in modern art, recognizing it where it is generally recognized (Picaso and Matisse, for example), but he takes its peculiarity, or perversity, to illustrate his thesis that the modern world is being ‘re-presented’ to us by the left hemisphere (he rarely misses an opportunity to write that word, ‘represent,’ with a hyphen, indicating that left hemisphere did so after first getting something raw from the right.) ‘Viewed from a neuropsychological standpoint, modern art appears to mimic the world as it would appear to someone whose right hemisphere was inactivated: in other words it brings into being the world of the left hemisphere (p.414).” A remarkable, putative fact about the brain and its relationship to mind is that, while EEG records reveal a readiness potential about a second before the onset of voluntary muscle activity, the subject only reports an intention to move about 0.2 seconds after the appearance of the readiness potential. This makes it seem that the brain decided to create movement before the subject’s conscious mind did. However, there are ongoing technical debates surrounding these data, comparing modern, single-trial, AI observations, which may or may not show a readiness potential, to the original outcome, achieved by averaging hundreds of trials to eliminate noise. Frankly, I don’t know what to make of it all. M believes that dreaming occurs primarily in the right brain, and this is supported by several lines of evidence. He also thinks Freud’s preconscious is in the right brain, but here the evidence seems less solid, based on what Claude told me. Which came first music or language? Music because it is simpler and has tonal qualities that convey feeling. In speech, itself, intonation is a more important part of the communication than words. And it goes without saying (if you’ll pardon the pun) that cooing and moaning and ohing groaning must have come before referential language. Singing and dancing are often conspicuously primitive. Babies respond to rhythm and tone, so mothers expand their range of tone; and babies appreciate it; they like baby talk. And, if one needed an evolutionary advantage to explain why music appeared and persisted, social cohesion would serve. Apparently the time frame for the appearance of language is a topic for debate among experts; M sides with those who think we did not have the capacity for language until at least 80,000 years ago, possibly only 40,000. That opinion is based on the occurrence of ritualized burial of the dead, plus a proliferation of art and tools. Chat GPT says that other experts point out that Neanderthals had a hyoid bone to support their tongues and therefore could have been speaking much earlier. Homo Heidelbergensis, the ancestor of H sapiens and Neanderthals, had a large brain and a vocal apparatus comparable to ours. The hypoglossal nerve (that controls the tongue) goes through the anterior condylar canal. Monkeys and apes have a small canal, but we have a big one, and have had a big one for a much longer time than the 40- or 80,000 years M thinks we've been talking. Likewise, there are thoracic vertebral canals (relevant to the control of breathing) that reflect the size of the nerves going through them. As with the condylar, they are large in in hominids, but not in the great apes. They have been large for 300,000 to 500,000 years. So, if we have not been speaking all that time, we may have been singing. M claims that poetry came before prose, which was first called pezzos logos, or walking language, and that the first poetry was sung. Religion: As a person who has gone 60 years or so without, I have little interest in the subject, but even here found edification. When I was a child and Church-of-England, our family prided itself on rationality. We thought the Roman Catholics believed a lot of hocus-pocus, whereas we did not. When we went for communion, we recognized that the bread and wine were no more than symbols. The Roman Catholics, we thought, probably believed literally. I now see, with the aid of M’s clarification of the two ways of knowing, that perhaps the Catholics reached further, using a Dionysian attitude, and experienced something unavailable to us. So congratulations to Roman Catholics! It’s not that I regret our approach; I think I would have dropped out anyway; but I can now appreciate the other stance. Language and the right hand are closely linked and M believes that language may have come from grasping, manipulating and tool-making. His reasons are several: Studies of gesture and language by David McNeil showed that gesture is either synchronized with speech or anticipates it. The origin of thought is believed by M to be the right hemisphere which is primary, not only temporally, but ontologically, because initially thought is minimally analytic; only by the time it is expressed has it become both imagistic and analytic. Gestures are said not only to reflect thought but to help constitute it. M says a child always points when he is naming and does not name without pointing. After right brain damage gesture is reduced and content, decontextualized. Mirror neurons, that are involved in finger movements activated by watching others carry out movements, are in Broca's area. Language is like grasping in that it enables reason, memory and fixity, all features of the knowledge characteristic of the left hemisphere. And language affords virtual representation, which is obviously useful to grasping and manipulating. The movement of time is what makes everything what it is. Not even pitch, our identification of a tone, can be achieved without a sample in time. We need at least a few vibrations to assign frequency. Music, like narrative, like the experience of our lives, like everything we know, must unfold in time. Therefore, there is no such thing as being in the present, except relatively. Whether we speak of the past, present or future, we must be referring to a sequence of events which is intelligible as such, even though we may call it one. M quotes Chris Nunn: ‘At the most basic level one cannot sustain attention to anything unless there is some form of memory of what one’s attention was doing a moment ago and of what the ‘anything’ is. [Conscious] attention is thus entirely dependent for its very moment-to-moment existence on intrinsic memory… Then again, the objects on which attention focuses seem to be available because they have been remembered. They are, in a sense, objects extracted from memory that happen to coincide with features of the world ‘out there.’ (p 164).’ Is there any retreat from the dominance of Reason? I don’t see it. I think we, as flesh-and-blood human beings, are not the last stage in the trend toward the Apollonian. Artificial Intelligence (which M never mentions) is upon us, and Machines are about to replace us. Reflecting on M’s speculation about Greece in the years, 600-400 BC, I have to ask: Is it of any benefit to try and guess what happened in people’s brains back then? Only if that makes things more interesting. But lets admit, it’s beyond knowing, and rational speculation. Similarly, in regard to The Reformation, The Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Modern Times, is it likely that the baker, the blacksmith, the painter, the scullion, the statesman and the soldier, etc., all experienced shifts in their left/right brain relations at the same time to create an era? Surely they would have been having different thoughts. The idea that they all swung about in sync neurologically is simply fanciful. When I first rebelled against M’s broader thesis I faulted myself, thinking: he is not talking about Society in general; he means to offer these ideas as an interpretation of elements of culture, art and philosophy. But no, I reread and he really does mean to explain fascism, Stalinism, the works. He says so quite plainly, and thinks we should deal with it: ‘Ultimately what we cannot afford to keep deferring is a regrounding of art and science in the lived world. Both need to be more human and more humane (p. 459).’ Such wishful thinking seems to me futile. To make things even more preposterous, he ties his grander notions to the idea that Schizophrenia is a good model for our exploitative attitude toward the environment, and to our modern condition generally. He thinks schizophrenia is a modern disease, which did not exist until the last few centuries. I think there are examples in The Old Testament. There may well be similarities between schizophrenia and right brain deficiencies, but no sensible person can believe that schizophrenia is, or is basically like, thinking that becomes too focused and rational. Schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder with genetic and environmental risk factors; there are numerous facts and mysteries that make it unsuitable as a crutch for understanding things that are even more complicated. Wonderfully informed and wide-ranging as it is, M’s theorizing is sometimes unreasonable, which, I suppose, he might be proud of, though he shouldn’t be. But as I said in the beginning, this book greatly rewards consideration.

I just finished this book. It took me about a month to go through it and critique it. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Please do not be mistaken. The book has flaws and I disagree with much of what it claims, but it is simply brilliant. I do a lot of reading in philosophy and this is a truly remarkable book. IMO, only two thinkers in the last 200 years are comparable to Iain, I think Iain is superior to both. The first is Hegel who wrote the early 1800's. Hegel wrote two major works (The Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic). While I detest Hegel, he is clearly the most influential thinker in our present culture. Marx is derived from Hegel as are the Post-Moderns and all forms of Critical Theory (Marcuse, Black Lives Matters, Critical Race Theory, et.al.). Iain, by the way, loves Hegel (it is one of the points I think he got wrong!). This book is divided into two Parts. Part 1 sets out the structure of Iain's thought, just as the Science of Logic sets out Hegel's. And, Iain's Part 1 is much easier to read than Hegel's Science of Logic. Iain's Part 2 applies his thought to history; he uses his thought to explain the development of human thought in the West from the ancient Greeks to Post-Modernism. Hegel did the same with his Phenomenology (of course, Hegel stopped his historical analysis much earlier). Once again Iain is much easier to read than Hegel. And, his work, IMO, is superior to Hegel both in content and in presentation. Not only is Iain much easier to read, he presents his thought in the proper order - structure first and then the application of the structure to history. Hegel did it backwards - he applied his structure to history first in the Phenomenology and then explained his structure in his Logic. The second thinker is Charles Darwin. Darwin build an intellectual structure which introduced a new concept into Science. This concept is called "natural selection", which asserts that species are changed as they adapt to different environments. This makes logical sense (after all, as Darwin pointed out, mankind is modifying species all the time - inventing new breeds of dogs and new types of flowers). At this level, Darwin's theory applies only to intra-species adaption, is falsifiable (which Karl Popper correctly IMO established as the hallmark for scientific theories), and was a huge scientific advance. Darwin then conflated his innovative and brilliant scientific theory of intra-species adaption into the "mythos" we know as "Darwinian Creationism". Darwinian Creationism is totally distinct from his intra-species natural selection theory. In traditional philosophical terms, Darwinian intra-species adaption is a "logos" and Dawinian Creationism is a "mythos" Darwinian Creationism claims to explain how all carbon based life on this planet came into existence. It is not falsifiable in the scientific sense (though many (erroneously IMO) claim it is). And it has been severely criticized. A excellent example is Thomas Nagel, who both is an atheist and holds PhD in Philosophy and is the head of the NYU philosophy department who asserts (once again correctly IMO) that Darwinian Creationism (the mythos), not Darwinian intra-species natural selection (the logos) simply cannot be true. But, whatever one thinks of Darwin, he is one of the few thinkers outside of Aristotle, who actually created two distinct and complementary systems of thought that have both been extraordinarily influential. Like Darwin, Iain has built a scientific theory (based on cognitive science) which explains how the operation of human cognition as a relationship between the two brain hemispheres. This is very much a "logos", just like Darwin created. Just like Darwin, Iain has taken his "logos" and created another far more extensive intellectual structure - one which explains and evaluates how this dual hemispheric structure has impacted human history starting with the ancient Greeks and ending with the post-moderns. This is not a "mythos". It is rather a comprehensive philosophical evaluation "model" - a way of evaluating certain historical periods and systems of thought. For example, Iain evaluates Descartes as compared to Heidegger. Comprehensive evaluation "models" are very rare in the history of human thought. For example, the last comprehensive philosophical evaluation "models" prior to Iain were proposed by David Hume in the early 1700's followed by Hegel in the early 1800's. Finally, Iain is the first true successor to the great Scottish thinker Thomas Reid (1710 -1796). Reid work was incredibly influential in Great Britain (from about 1750 to about 1820) and in America (from about 1760 to about 1900). In fact, Reid was extremely influential in the founding of America. Robert Curry has recently written two books on the subject. For a variety of reasons, Thomas Reid simply disappeared from the world for thought for nearly a century, but is now being "rediscovered". For example, Nicholas Wolterstorff (a philosophy professor at Yale) has written and excellent book on Reid, comparing his work to that of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Part of the reason Reid "disappeared" is that he had no worthy successor, until Iain. In fact, Reid was one of the first post-Newtonian cognitive scientists. His contemporary cognitive scientist, who had a drastically different take on the subject, is the better know Scotsman David Hume. Iain does cognitive science in the style of Reid and provides the first positive advancement on that discipline in line with the approach of Thomas Reid and based on the same metaphysical point of view. It was quite exciting for me to encounter it. I can hardly wait to read Iain's second work released in 2021. Finally, if you have read or been impressed by the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et. al.), this book is a must read. Just as Thomas Reid wrote to counter David Hume (and did so with incredible success in Great Britain and the United States), Iain writes to counter the New Atheists (particularly Dawkins). In fact, the relationship between Iain's work that of Richard Dawkins bears a striking resemblance to the relationship between Thomas Reid's work and that of David Hume. Just as Thomas Reid was a theistic counter (based on science) to Hume atheism, Iain is a theistic counter (based on science) to Dawkins' atheism. Although flawed, it is a remarkable accomplishment and I highly recommend it.

McGilchrist makes several fascinating connections between neurophysiology and its influence on the world, but his evidence seems unconvincing at times. The Master and his Emissary first touches upon the physiology of the brain, especially the left and right hemispheres. Put simply, while most tasks are split between the two hemispheres, the association cortex of the right hemisphere gives us a subjective and realistic view of the world, while the left hemisphere distances us from it and creates and idealized structure. Generalizations taken from the population assign meaning to the hemispheres and their function. Distinctions between other pairs of brain structures are discussed, but the focus remains on the left and right. The author makes several assumptions in proving his point and explicitly states them, but the way these assumptions are presented seems to imply that they were written after the rest of the book, correcting for McGilchrist's inaccuracies. The second half of the book is dedicated to explaining in extensive detail how the differences in hemispheric influences upon human behavior and world view have shaped the world as we know it. While he covers and extensive time period and several distinct cultures, his main focus is on the Western culture of the past 500 years. Various aspects of human expression, from science to drama and paintings are analyzed in terms of what McGilchrist considers a growing influence of the left hemisphere. Throughout the book he uses the general cultural trends that he describes to illustrate his growing concern with the spreading influence of the left hemisphere and the way this imbalance puts human wellbeing in peril. McGilchrist combines various disciplines into proving his thesis, but the context of his writing and the methods which he uses are sometimes at odds with each other. He is wary of the way left hemisphere is like a mathematician - it analyzes and attempts to give meaning to the world. McGilchrist argues that over time, the left hemisphere has grown in its influence - thus creating a civilization which has grown apart from nature and human subjectivity towards an objective worldview. The advancement of science and the scientific method, the author argues, is disproportionally fast. Science does not provide the ultimate truth - the data that it gathers, while undoubtedly useful, is also subject to human subjectivity. If a civilization bases its absolute truths on science which is flawed from the beginning, while at the same time distancing itself from reality - the civilization is bound to be misled. McGilchrist uses examples of art - drama and paintings, for example, and their evolution over time to show the fluctuating, but growing influence of abstraction and representation in civilization, especially the West. He claims that the reason for these fluctuations is that one hemisphere must catch up to the other to advance to the next stage of human understanding and perception, but the left hemisphere is advancing faster nonetheless. However, his evidence may very well be coincidental. He provides relatively few examples for the method he is using. Finding patterns in paintings may support his hypothesis of human duality being expressed, but could very well be the result of him looking for evidence where there is none. McGilchrist is concerned with the rise in objectivism, yet he uses various schools of philosophy in support of his objectives. If science is itself subject to the flaw of subjectivity then several conflicting schools of philosophy are guaranteed to be subjectively biased - it is hard to imagine that absolute objective truth can have several contradictory aspects. McGilchrist's ideas are bound to spark fascinating discussions on the subject of human neurophysiology, the way it shaped today's world over the ages, and the direction in which civilization is heading. Given today's exponentially rising globalization - the entire world, not just the West, is potentially subject to the phenomena discussed in the book. While undeniably provocative, the text cannot be accepted at face value. The evidence presented is not hard - one can find such patterns to support a hypothesis if he looks hard enough. Even though the evidence supports the thesis, there is not enough of it to be statistically significant, nor is it empirical or follows scientific method. Evolution of art, on which the author so heavily relies in support of his claims, is a very subjective topic in itself. McGilchrist agrees that science, while not revealing the one truth, is useful. What method then, other than scientific, could be used to provide concrete evidence for such bold claims? The Master and his Emissary is well-written text by an obviously educated author. But it should not be taken as scientific without a great deal of skepticism. In his fascination with the idea of the influence of hemisphere physiology, McGilchrist at times gets carried away with what seem to be repeating descriptions of the same piece of evidence or train of thought. The supporting claims seem to originate from the conclusion, not the other way around. He also refers to two states of existence - the way science and perception are and the way they should be. These are based on the change in worldview of civilization over time, as well as McGilchrist's personal opinions. Yet, according to him, if humans are intrinsically subjectively flawed, then no one is in position to propose ideal methods of discourse, science, and the development of culture. I disagree with the criticism of the current state of affairs - art becoming more abstract over time is not the basis for fear of losing touch with reality. McGilchrist himself states that he very selectively uses historical examples, as the plethora of evidence and analyses available are too much to be discussed in a single book. Selective usage of data is the very opposite of what constitutes scientific method and objective discourse. The growth spurt of science and technology has been extremely useful to civilization (I am making an assumption here that I believe even McGilchrist would agree with). If science works, flawed as it may be, there is no reason to fear what influence it may eventually have on human neurophysiology.

It seems odd to me to be able to read the works of a living being whose work is of such profundity that he must surely take his place amongst the most important thinkers, or theoreticians in a century or more. Typically, one encounters such stuff in college or graduate schools long after the author is deceased both because important, original, theoretical work is rarely produced and it usually takes time for the import of the work to be appreciated. As such, we may consider ourselves fortunate to get the benefit of Mr. McGilchrist's important work in real time. In this admittedly verbose tome, the author explicates a theory of the brain's biomechanical workings that is also a theory of civilzation; or rather how our western civilization is and has been shaped by the way that our collective society has been trained and encouraged to think. Yes, it is based upon the notion of the existence of a "left brain" and a "right brain" but no it is not the facile popular culture stereotype that we believe we already understand. It wouldn't be fair nor possible to properly explain or describe what is contained in this book but you may be certain that if you have the fortitude and patience to undertake a reading of this dense and, as mentioned, verbose book with a fundamentally changed understanding of the processes by which our modern civilization has been transformed by the reordering of the way we actually think about problems and what is and has done to our present state of being. As you may have guessed, this book is a critique of the modern mind, modernity, and society that is both fresh, provocative and, yes, disturbing. One hesitates to call it a book of philosophy but it comes very close to being a primer on how one might undertake a reordering of mental priorities for to shape a future that our present ways of thinking seems to put at risk. This a deep, trenchant, and convincing argument and it is worthy of your time.

I have enjoyed this book so much. It's a little hard to read in the beginning as it's written by a doctor and is very clinical but as you move to thward the middle sections it gets easier and funner

This is a ground breaking and shattering book. (Superlatively true of the first half, but the second half is not ground breaking or shattering.) I am assuming McGilchrist knows what he is talking about and is not giving us a skewed presentation of the material he goes over. If I can count on that, then the material he goes over is astonishing. Most professional reviews are positive. There are volumes of evidentiary material in the social sciences and especially linguistic philosophy that deserve a second look in light of this book. The author points to some of these, but all kinds of scholars in the subtle arts will see things pertinent to their own fields not touched on in the book. Take note, fine arts specialists and people with a bent for aesthetics. One that is dear and near to me is Wittgenstein's rendering of the meaning of language as tied up with its use. I've held to these understandings for decades, and a lot of my published social theory draws from it. However, now it appears that you can be fully competent at linguistic use (knowing how to get through a conversation and so on) but find the whole idea of it meaning anything baffling OR (depending on which side of the brain has been temporarily turned off) you can perfectly understand meaning and know desperately what you want to say but be frustrated into anxiety by the fact that you don't know how to use language, you don't know any words, you don't know grammar and so on. I imagine the latter to be like a "senior moment" when you're struggling for a familiar word that escapes you for the moment, only here it's the whole language that escapes you. You can "feel" it but be unable to say anything. It's even odder to imagine being able to hear and comprehend what other people are talking about in its course without recognizing a single word. At the very least, this is challenging to Wittgenstein scholars, and there are many others. (McGilchrist gives an informed and sympathetic reading to major phenomenologists who, he says, were struggling to say why what they were trying to say cannot be said in language but trying to say it in language anyway, a despair-inducing exercise. McGilchrist allows that he also is trapped in that loop of self-defeat, but now he has the evidence.) And while Wittgenstein's use-meaning seems to take a hit, that same hit brings new profundity to "Whereof which we cannot speak, we thereof must remain silent." So at least Wittgenstein comes out clean! Once your Gestalt has been rocked in part one of this book, however, part two will be disappointing if you know much about historical shifts toward, and away from, subjectively experienced modes of rationality. You may realize that in light of part one you will be able to predict what you'll read in part two relevant to the topics listed. It's pretty obvious. But for over a hundred years there have been better renditions of these historical trends than McGilchrist offers here; what he adds is the Brain. What's shifting here is what kinds of ideational modes we respect more than others. If we respect rationality over intuition (think of all the routines that get "behaviorized" in policy statements at your average American university so that they can be applied "disinterestedly"), this isn't because our brains are changing...even if brain changes can be registered. (Computer games change our brains, but that change didn't cause computer games.) McGilchrist doesn't exactly say it's all happening because of our changing brains, but he does couch it in terms of one side of the brain winning some sort of natural battle with the other side (a battle that is convincing in part one). He doesn't quite come out and say that the victory of bureaucracy and rationality over tradition and sentiment occurs in the brain or that brain-change is an autonomous causal variable where one side just happens to win out over the other, and he is aware of cultural and historical forces at work. But treating the astonishing findings presented in part one as a template for all of these other matters is, I believe, unwarranted. We have enough to handle from part one alone.

Time and again while reading Mr. McGilchrist's inspiring (and cautionary) text, I was reminded of the Biblical quote: "Unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." As the text explains, the right brain is naturally dominant in children, but loses its primary position later in life. Since the left brain is much more intentional and goal-oriented, we could grossly simplify the situation by saying that, as children, we live in the world as it is, whereas as adults, we are living in a state of consciousness where we focus on what is important to us, largely filtering out the raw reality of the moment. This book explains the differences between these two modes of being in the world (as represented by the very different functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain), and thereby helps us to become more aware of the very real danger of living our lives largely in the realm of our own desires, rather than in the world as it presents itself in its full wholeness.

Harika bir kitap, hızlı teslimat. Ways of attending adlı kitabı okudum ve ardından bunu aldım, çok memnunum

Buona lettura

I was a bit late to the party. Although I have been following McGilchrist for some years and having read his essay The Divided Brain and the Search For Meaning, it was only very recently that I embraced TMAHE. Effectively I must say that I really delved into it in such a way that besides reading on my Kindle device, I went after the paper printed edition. So beware, for my humble review has a double filter. The author, as most reviewers already acclaimed for his importance, has been successful in touching a nerve and releasing a whole paralyzed body from its inertness as we face modernity, our spoiled culture and the threats of AI. Yes, I must say this is the key to our future. Where else would we find - in a single stroke - the key to overcome the VUCA spell that has fallen upon us in the present day, imprisoning our society from East to West? Reading McGilchrist is the road less traveled everyone must choose. As we have learned (or should have learned), Philosophy is the mother of wisdom, and together with the Humanities gives us the path to better understand ourselves and help us look to the future with courage and hope. Even though Modernity wants to stress the opposite, it is within the Judeo-Christian culture and tradition (or the Western World), that we find strength to keep on prowling through our almost infinite adversities. Then comes Neuroscience and the progress it has achieved through research and the dedicated care to brain injury patients – in which Medicine and Psychiatry also play a very important role. The message that McGilchrist wants to deliver is plainly simple. We have despised our right hemisphere and its importance, and little by little, we have allowed the left hemisphere to triumph. We must get hold of the Master’s wand for chaos has been the result of the Apprentice’s shenanigans. And literally it is in our hands to take the initiative. Of course, there is a catch to life and nature. Little good does it do to know what is wrong with ourselves and our world. If for Heaven’s sake we want to change, we have to cross that river. That is where Iain McGilchrist directs us to hold our breath and jump into the rabbit hole of the Divided Brain. For it is not so much about knowing what the hemispheres do, but on knowing how the hemisphere organically are. We must consider our brain as the source of a more fulfilled life – individually and collectively. Since ‘both hemispheres clearly play crucial roles in the experience of each human individual’ (p. 6), to become aware of the situation is the first step enabling the individual to take charge of the reality he perceives and interacts with. As McGilchrist tirelessly stresses, ‘attention is a moral act’. And for a simple reason, the task of taking control of your brain, letting the right hemisphere be the Master, is not achieved by a seven-step how-to instruction. That would be a left hemisphere way to solve it. We would be back where we started, since there is no instant flourishing. The process may be slow, but enduring and permanent. To be aware and awake, to let it be conscious, attentive to the reality of our daily endeavours, to have an open mind so to see and understand, to thrive in the world of wisdom, to be shaped by knowledge given by the giants that have preceded us, to read from our most distinguished authors, to be with and in nature, to live slowly and thoughtfully, to have true and reliable friends and socialize. And last but most important of all, to reach for the Transcendent. Although this is just a starting list, I urge readers to step into square one. Read this majestic work, enriched in every page with referential notes and bibliographical citations, constituting a true and profound masterpiece for humanity.

An excellent, if challenging, read. My knowledge of philosophy and neuroscience are not my strengths and the book, for the most part, majors on these areas. However, if you persevere, the way the author explores the strengths and weaknesses of the left and right hemisphere of the brain and relates them to how we view the world and the world views us, becomes clearer and clearer. He finally relates how the left and right hemisphere’s relationship has evolved through time with a focus on the here and now. The author’s research of his subject is immense and thorough which helps to provide you with a very enlightened view of the subject matter (whether you have specialist knowledge or not). All in all, a very worthwhile read which I highly recommend.

右脳左脳の今までの神話を書き換え、科学的データで詳しく説明し、西洋文明の成り立ちを導く画期的な本。目から鱗が落ちる。左脳の暴走に牛耳られている現代文明が崖っぷちに立たされている今だからこそ薦めたい本である。