As he had already argued in The Master and His Emissary, the materialism, egoism, and other sordid pathologies affecting our world can be read as the consequence of the left hemisphere’s usurpation of the right, claiming for itself the starring role when its evolutionarily intended part is that of supporting actor. McGilchrist has laid out a comprehensive and, in my opinion, thoroughly convincing case that this imbalance can be fruitfully interpreted as the result of a “left hemisphere insurrection” (1325). Modern Westerners are doing grave damage to the world-to ecosystems, to culture, and to ourselves-as a result of a lop-sided way of seeing.
Neuroscience is relevant not simply for the truths it unveils about how the brain permits and constrains our consciousness, but because of how an understanding of these constraints can help heal what ails us. The Matter With Things presents a comprehensive argument intended both to diagnose and to treat a pathological world view. What follows are some initial thoughts, shared to introduce but also in an effort to think with the ideas laid out in this marvelous book. 16 at 11am Pacific email me for a Zoom link). I’ll have a chance to discuss the book with Iain this weekend via video conference, an event hosted by my graduate program ( /pcc) which is open to the public (Sunday, Oct. Volume 2 then explores the implications of the hemisphere hypothesis for what is likely to be true about the universe itself, including deep inquiries into time, motion, space, matter, consciousness, value, and the sacred. Volume 1 of TMWT focuses on “the ways to truth,” revisiting the hemisphere hypothesis and unpacking the respective roles of the left and right hemispheres in attention, perception, judgment, apprehension, emotion, creativity, science, reason, imagination, and intuition.
I’ve just finished reading The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (2021), Iain McGilchrist’s two volume follow-up to The Master and His Emissary (2009). “Questions such as those concerning scientific truth, the nature of reality, and the place of man in the cosmos require for their study some knowledge of the constitution, quality, capacities and limitations of the human mind through which medium all such problems must be handled.” -Roger Sperry (1952)
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