The Master and His Emissary
Encyclopedia
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World is a detailed and extensively documented scientific study of the specialist hemispheric functioning
of the brain. The differing world views of the right and left brain (the "Master" and "emissary" in the title, respectively) have, according to the author, shaped Western culture since the time of the ancient Greek
philosopher
Plato
, and the growing conflict between these views has implications for the way the modern world is changing.
The Master and His Emissary is written by Iain McGilchrist
, a former Oxford literary scholar, now a doctor, psychiatrist
and writer.
.
As far back as 1861, research into speech and language by French physician Pierre Paul Broca and later by German physician Karl Wernicke
shed light on the functions of the two brain hemispheres. However, modern research really became established in the 1960s when Michael Gazzaniga
and Roger Wolcott Sperry
carried out research on split-brain
patients in which a large part of the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres had been severed. This work was followed by that of others such as psychologist Robert E. Ornstein. It has become clear that the two hemispheres perform different functions and a number of different theories have been constructed based on research.
In 1976, psychologist Julian Jaynes
published a book entitled The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
. His hypothesis was that the human mind, from ancient times to as recently as 3000 years ago, assumed a state which he termed bicameral mind. In this state, cognitive functions were divided into two distinct sections, with one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys. Jaynes proposed that in those times, humans did not possess the self-awareness component of consciousness, and that at that time people would experience the world in a manner similar to modern-day people suffering from schizophrenia
.
Since those times, according to Jaynes, there has been a breakdown of the bicameral state, or a shift away from it, with the modern-day emergence of introspection
and consciousness
.
In part, McGilchrist's book reviews the evidence of such research and theories, and based on this and cultural evidence, the author arrives at his own conclusions.
McGilchrist believes that "there is, literally, a world of difference between the [brain] hemispheres. Understanding quite what that is has involved a journey through many apparently unrelated areas: not just neurology and psychology, but philosophy, literature and the arts, and even, to some extent, archaeology and anthropology."
Influences
In an interview with Frontier Psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist names two influences, amongst many, on his work: the psychiatrist John Cutting
and the Chicago psychologist David McNeill
. McGilchrist states: "What I began to see – and it was John Cutting's work on the right hemisphere that set me thinking – was that the difference lay not in what they [the two hemispheres] do, but how they do it." In the same interview, the author explains: "Some very subtle research by David McNeill, amongst others, confirms that thought originates in the right hemisphere, is processed for expression in speech by the left hemisphere, and the meaning integrated again by the right (which alone understands the overall meaning of a complex utterance, taking everything into account)."
Speaking about the book on the BBC Radio 4
Today programme, McGilchrist dismisses what he sees as some popular misconceptions about lateralization of brain function, such as one hemisphere handling reason and the other language (etc), stating that such processing involves both sides of the brain. McGilchrist points out that the idea that "reason [is] in the left hemisphere and something like creativity
and emotion
[are] in the right hemisphere" is an unhelpful misconception. He states that "every single brain function is carried out by both hemispheres. Reason and emotion and imagination depend on the coming together of what both hemispheres contribute." Nevertheless he does see an obvious dichotomy, and asks himself: "if the brain is all about making connections, why is it that it's evolved with this whopping divide down the middle?"
The author holds instead that each of the hemispheres of the brain has a different "take" on the world or produces a different "version" of the world, though under normal circumstances these work together. This, he says, is basically to do with attention. He illustrates this with the case of chicks which use the eye connected to the left hemisphere to attend to the fine detail of picking seeds from amongst grit, whilst the other eye attends to the broader threat from predators. According to the author, "The left hemisphere has its own agenda, to manipulate and use the world"; its world view is essentially that of a mechanism. The right has a broader outlook, "has no preconceptions, and simply looks out to the world for whatever might be. In other words it does not have any allegiance to any particular set of values."
Writing about the book in The Guardian
, the philosopher Mary Midgley
explains that "The bifurcation seems to have become necessary in the first place because these two main functions – comprehensiveness and precision – are both necessary, but are too distinct to be combined."
McGilchrist explains this more fully in a later interview for ABC Radio National's
All in the Mind
programme, stating: "The right hemisphere sees a great deal, but in order to refine it, and to make sense of it in certain ways---in order to be able to use what it understands of the world and to be able to manipulate the world---it needs to delegate the job of simplifying it and turning it into a usable form to another part of the brain" [the left hemisphere]. Though he sees this as an essential "double act", McGilchrist points to the problem that the left hemisphere has a "narrow, decontextualised and theoretically based model of the world which is self consistent and is therefore quite powerful" and to the problem of the left hemisphere's lack of awareness of its own shortcomings; whilst in contrast, the right hemisphere is aware that it is in a symbiotic
relationship. The neuroscientists Dennett and Kinsborne, for example, conducted experiments which involved temporarily deactivating one of the brain's hemispheres. In their research they found that "when completely false propositions are put to the left hemisphere it accepts them as valid because the internal structure of the argument is valid." However, the right hemisphere knows from experience that the propositions are false. McGilchrist further points out that where people have suffered a stroke
involving the right hemisphere of the brain, they tend to under-estimate or even deny that they have a disability. Again, research has shown that the right hemisphere tends to hold a more realistic personal assessment than the left.
Another issue that McGilchrist points out is that the two hemispheres "inhibit one-another across the corpus callosum" between the hemispheres when one of them is active. This he sees as a natural reciprocal action. However, the issue which arises is that the left hemisphere is better able to inhibit the right than [vice versa].
and Reformation
; the Enlightenment
; Romanticism
and Industrial Revolution
; to the modern and postmodern
worlds which, to our detriment, are becoming increasingly dominated by the left brain.
In a lecture at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA), McGilchrist quotes Albert Einstein
as saying "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." (McGilchrist does not specify where in Einstein's writings the quote can be found, however.)
According to McGilchrist, interviewed for ABC Radio National's
All in the Mind
programme, rather than seeking to explain the social and cultural changes and structure of civilisation in terms of the brain — which would be reductionist
— he is pointing to a wider, more inclusive perspective and greater reality in which there are two competing ways of thinking and being, and that in modern Western society we appear increasingly to be able to only entertain one viewpoint: that of the left hemisphere.
The author argues that the brain and the mind do not simply experience the world, but that the world we experience is a product or meeting of that which is outside us with our mind. The outcome, the nature of this world, is thus dependent upon "which mode of attention we bring to bear on the world".
McGilchrist sees an occasional flowering of "the best of the right hemisphere and the best of the left hemisphere working together" in our history: as witnessed in Athens in the 6th century by activity in the humanities and in science and in ancient Rome during the Augustan
era. However, he also sees that as time passes, the left hemisphere once again comes to dominate affairs and things slide back into "a more theoretical and conceptualised abstracted bureaucratic
sort of view of the world." According to McGilchrist, the cooperative use of both left and right hemispheres diminished and became imbalanced in favour of the left in the time of the classical Greek philosophers Parmenides
and Plato
and in the late classical Roman era. This cooperation and openness were regained during the Renaissance 1,000 years later which brought "sudden efflorescence of creative life in the sciences and the arts". However, with the Reformation, the early Enlightenment, and what has followed as rationalism
has arisen, our world has once again become increasingly rigid, simplified and rule-bound.
Looking at more recent Western history, McGilchrist sees in the Industrial Revolution that for the first time artefacts were being made "very much to the way the left hemisphere sees the world — simple solids that are regular, repeated, not individual in the way that things that are made by hand are" and that a transformation of the environment in a similar vein followed on from that; that what was perceived inwardly was projected outwardly on a mass scale. The author argues that the scientific materialism which developed in the 19th century is still with us, at least in the biological sciences, though he sees physics as having moved on. McGilchrist does not see modernism
and postmodernism
as being in opposition to this, but also "symptomatic of a shift towards the left hemisphere's conception of the world", taking the idea that there is no absolute truth and turning that into "there is no truth at all", and he finds some of the movements' works of art "symptomatic of people whose right hemisphere is not working very well." McGilchrist cites the American psychologist Louis Sass, author of Madness and Modernism, pointing out that Sass "draws extensive parallels between the phenomena of modernism and postmodernism and of schizophrenia
", with things taken out of context and fragmented.
Asked in an interview whether he blamed the loss of "our relationship to beauty, to body, to spirit and art" on the left hemisphere, McGilchrist pointed to an article by Stanley Fish, entitled Does Reason Know what Reason Doesn't Know? and stated that the essence of the problem is "that the left hemisphere is not aware of what it is not aware of" and that the difficulty we are faced with is giving the right hemisphere a fair hearing. Whilst agreeing that beauty, spirit and art are not the sole preserve of the right hemisphere, the author does see a reductionism not only in science but in popular culture and a loss of "the power of art to alert us to things beyond ourselves", to the transcendent.
Asked whether he was giving the left hemisphere "too much flak", given that reason
and rationality
formed the basis of modern, scientific society, McGilchrist stated that he believes that modern science began earlier than the Enlightenment and that there was "an enormously rich period in the 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries", as seen for example in "the spirit in science from Bacon
through to Goethe". McGilchrist went on to point out that "the left hemisphere is not devoid of feelings at all, it has its own range of emotions and the capacity to appreciate emotions." To the author, sequential reasoning and rationality are important. To argue that the right hemisphere is right and the left is wrong is an "either/or black and white misconception" which is in itself indicative of the left hemisphere's view of the world.
However, whilst the author appreciates that the left hemisphere "has evolved to help us use the world to achieve our ends", he nevertheless draws the conclusion that it is in denial and might be likened to a sleepwalker approaching an abyss.
McGilchrist likens this to the story told by the German philosopher and philologist Friedrich Nietzsche
, which the author uses in the book's introduction and which sums up the central thrust of the work:
According to a review in The Economist
, McGilchrist believes this usurping of control by the left brain has led to the creation of "a dehumanised society in the West, contributed to epidemics of schizophrenia and autism, caused environmental despoliation, and [also] given rise to some wilfully ugly modernist art and music."
Summing up his ideas on the two brain hemispheres at an RSA lecture, McGilchrist said: "The world of the left hemisphere, dependent on denotative language and abstraction, yields clarity and the power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualized, explicit, general in nature, but ultimately lifeless. The right hemisphere, by contrast, yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, never perfectly known, and to this world it exists in a certain relationship. The knowledge that is mediated by the left hemisphere is, however, in a closed system. It has the advantage of perfection, but the perfection is bought ultimately at the price of emptiness."
in Times Online
describes the work as "A landmark new book [which] suggests we are thinking more and more like machines, and risk losing what makes us human."
David Cox in the London Evening Standard writes that the author is "a giant in his vital field [who] shows convincingly that the degeneracy of the West springs from our failure to manage the binary division of our brains."
David Lorimer writes in the Scientific and Medical Network's Network Review No 101 that "It is no exaggeration to say that this quite remarkable book will radically change the way you understand the world and yourself." Lorimer is of the opinion that the book is a "genuine tour de force, a monumental achievement – I can think of no one else who could have conceived, let alone written, a book of such penetrating brilliance.
Professor of philosophy A. C. Grayling
writes in the Literary Review
that it is "A beautifully written, erudite, fascinating and adventurous book. It embraces a prodigious range of enquiry, from neurology to psychology, from philosophy to primatology, from myth to history to literature. It goes from the microstructure of the brain to great epochs of Western civilisation, confidently and readably. One turns its five hundred pages – a further hundred are dense with notes and references in tiny print – as if it were an adventure story ... McGilchrist tells us about the rapidly evolving technologies and experimental work in fascinating and lucid detail." However, his conclusion is less encouraging: "The fact is that the findings of brain science are nowhere near fine-grained enough yet to support the large psychological and cultural conclusions Iain McGilchrist draws from them. Absorbing and fascinating though the book is, it does not persuade one that returning our Western civilisation to the government of such supposed right-hemisphere possessions as religion and instinct would be anywhere near a good thing."
A review in The Economist
is critical in its assessment that the reader is "treated to some very loose talk and to generalisations of breathtaking sweep". Though the reviewer sees "a scintillating intelligence [...] at work" in the second part of the book, he states that "it has plainly become untethered from its moorings in brain science" and goes on to point out that the author provides no physiological evidence for his assertion that the pronounced left-right dichotomy is not present in Asian cultures. Finally, the reviewer concludes that "Mr (sic.) McGilchrist would not be unhappy to learn that what he has to say about the roles of the hemispheres in Western culture is simply a metaphor and is not literally true."
In The Guardian
, the philosopher Mary Midgley
writes that The Master and His Emissary is "a very remarkable book." She is of the opinion that "It is not [...] just one more glorification of feeling at the expense of thought. Rather, it points out the complexity, the divided nature of thought itself and asks about its connection with the structure of the brain." Going on to describe in detail the theories behind the book, she concludes that "though neurologists may well not welcome it because it asks them new questions, the rest of us will surely find it splendidly thought-provoking" and describes the explanations as "penetrating, lively, thorough and fascinating."
Professor Adam Zeman, consultant neurologist
, senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh
on the medical and mystical
levels of consciousness
, and author of A Portrait of the Brain and Consciousness: A User's Guide, writes in Standpoint
magazine that Iain McGilcrist's presentation is "immensely erudite". He finds the book "remarkable", written "with great clarity" and "a treasure chest of fascinating detail and memorable quotation." In Zeman's opinion, McGilchrist "extends [the] received wisdom with a hugely ambitious, absorbing and questionable thesis: the two hemispheres have radically contrasting personalities; that they live in a state of creative tension, sometimes declining into open war; and that their struggle for supremacy provides the key to understanding the major cultural movements of human history."
Writing in the Royal College of General Practitioners
's British Journal of General Practice in March 2010, James Willis is of the opinion that "Iain McGilchrist’s qualifications for his massive undertaking are ideal, perhaps unique." and that "[his] grasp of this vast field, and the depth of his philosophical and artistic insight, are staggering." The work "underpins, validates, explains a whole slew of intuitions about general practice and life."
W. F. Bynum, Professor Emeritus of the History of Medicine at University College London
, and former head of the Academic Unit of the Wellcome Centre, writes in The Times Literary Supplement
: "McGilchrist's careful analysis of how brains work is a veritable tour de force, gradually and skilfully revealed. I know of no better exposition of the current state of functional brain neuroscience."
In the April/May 2010 edition of Bookforum
, American author Jonah Lehrer
writes "Like Jaynes, McGilchrist interprets human history as an unresolved quarrel between the left and right hemispheres." However, "distinct hemispheric talents lead McGilchrist to invert Jaynes's hypothesis. While Jaynes argued that the Greek gods were invented to explain the breakdown of the bicameral mind—our hemispheres were finally able to listen to each other—McGilchrist argues the opposite."
On 19 June 2010, McGilchrist was interviewed at length for ABC Radio National's
All in the Mind
programme by the show's host, Natasha Mitchell. In the programme, McGilchrist describes and explains his work in detail. The interview is available as an audio podcast, together with a transcript, and further mp3 audio clips are available on the show's official blog.
In the journal Brain
in September 2010, Professor Andrew Scull writes that "It is no exaggeration to say that Part One of the book is a tour de force … [in Part Two] McGilchrist puts on display a remarkable erudition, an ability to discuss with intelligence and insight the history of Western art and literature, philosophy of a whole range of stripes, musicology (and the relationships between music and the brain), and the varieties of religious experience, just to mention a few of the topics he touches upon."
The Master and His Emissary was shortlisted for the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas
Book Prize. Currently one of the largest book prizes in the UK, the award is given annually to a book which presents new, important and challenging ideas, and which is engaging, accessible and rigorously argued. It was also longlisted for the Royal Society
2010 Prize for Science Books. The judges said of the book: "McGilchrist welcomes you straight into his world, without making too many presumptions about what you already know, presenting beautiful ideas in an eminently readable and engrossing manner."
In the Financial Times
in January 2011, Harry Eyres describes The Master and His Emissary as "a fascinating book", and is of the opinion that McGilchrist "is a subtle and clever thinker, and unusually qualified to range with such authority over so many different domains of knowledge."
Reviewing The Master and His Emissary in the American Journal of Psychiatry
in June 2011, Jacob Freedman, M.D. informs his readers that: "In essence, Iain McGilchrist's book is an exploration of the link between the brain's hemispheric asymmetry and the historical development of Western society. This is no small task: chronicling how the left brain's determined reductionism and the right brain's insightful and holistic approach have shaped music, language, politics, and art." The first half of the book, Freedman says, "provides a thorough understanding of brain lateralization", and in the second half, "the author takes his framework of the left hemisphere's self-obsessed reductionism and the right hemisphere's empathic holism and tries to "understand the structure of the world that the brain has in part created." Freedman is of the opinion that The Master and His Emissary is an "epic", "brilliantly written book that valiantly addresses the effect hemispheric asymmetry has had on Western civilization" and that "while the author quotes Ramachandran
and Heidegger more frequently than Freud and Bleuler, The Master and His Emissary is still certainly a relevant book for any psychiatrist (and any neuroscientist or philosopher for that matter)."
, writes: "At last! A book on neuroscience that is a thrilling read, philosophically astute and with wonderful science."
Lateralization of brain function
A longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebral hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum. The sides resemble each other and each hemisphere's structure is generally mirrored by the other side. Yet despite the strong anatomical similarities, the functions of each...
of the brain. The differing world views of the right and left brain (the "Master" and "emissary" in the title, respectively) have, according to the author, shaped Western culture since the time of the ancient Greek
Classical Greece
Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...
philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, and the growing conflict between these views has implications for the way the modern world is changing.
The Master and His Emissary is written by Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, doctor, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar. McGilchrist came to prominence after the publication of his book The Master and His Emissary, subtitled The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World....
, a former Oxford literary scholar, now a doctor, psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
and writer.
Background context
A longitudinal fissure separates the brain into two cerebral hemispheres connected by a structure called the corpus callosumCorpus callosum
The corpus callosum , also known as the colossal commissure, is a wide, flat bundle of neural fibers beneath the cortex in the eutherian brain at the longitudinal fissure. It connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres and facilitates interhemispheric communication...
.
As far back as 1861, research into speech and language by French physician Pierre Paul Broca and later by German physician Karl Wernicke
Karl Wernicke
Carl Wernicke was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He earned his medical degree at the University of Breslau...
shed light on the functions of the two brain hemispheres. However, modern research really became established in the 1960s when Michael Gazzaniga
Michael Gazzaniga
Michael S. Gazzaniga is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. He is one of the leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience, the study of the neural basis of mind...
and Roger Wolcott Sperry
Roger Wolcott Sperry
Roger Wolcott Sperry was a neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate who, together with David Hunter Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel, won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work with split-brain research....
carried out research on split-brain
Split-brain
Split-brain is a lay term to describe the result when the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed to some degree. The surgical operation to produce this condition is called corpus callosotomy and is usually used as a last resort to treat otherwise intractable epilepsy...
patients in which a large part of the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres had been severed. This work was followed by that of others such as psychologist Robert E. Ornstein. It has become clear that the two hemispheres perform different functions and a number of different theories have been constructed based on research.
In 1976, psychologist Julian Jaynes
Julian Jaynes
Julian Jaynes was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind , in which he argued that ancient peoples were not conscious....
published a book entitled The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Bicameralism (psychology)
Bicameralism is a hypothesis in psychology that argues that the human brain once assumed a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind...
. His hypothesis was that the human mind, from ancient times to as recently as 3000 years ago, assumed a state which he termed bicameral mind. In this state, cognitive functions were divided into two distinct sections, with one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys. Jaynes proposed that in those times, humans did not possess the self-awareness component of consciousness, and that at that time people would experience the world in a manner similar to modern-day people suffering from schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
.
Since those times, according to Jaynes, there has been a breakdown of the bicameral state, or a shift away from it, with the modern-day emergence of introspection
Introspection
Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious and purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul...
and consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
.
In part, McGilchrist's book reviews the evidence of such research and theories, and based on this and cultural evidence, the author arrives at his own conclusions.
Book summary
The 608 page book is divided into an introduction, two parts and a conclusion. Deeply researched over a period of twenty years, it contains many illustrations and over 120 pages of detailed notes and references (in small print) and bibliography.McGilchrist believes that "there is, literally, a world of difference between the [brain] hemispheres. Understanding quite what that is has involved a journey through many apparently unrelated areas: not just neurology and psychology, but philosophy, literature and the arts, and even, to some extent, archaeology and anthropology."
Influences
In an interview with Frontier Psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist names two influences, amongst many, on his work: the psychiatrist John Cutting
John Cutting (psychiatrist)
Dr. John Charles Cutting, who writes as Dr. John Cutting , is a British psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia research...
and the Chicago psychologist David McNeill
David McNeill (Chicago psychologist)
Professor David McNeill is an American psychologist and writer specializing in scientific research into psycholinguistics and especially the relationship of language to thought, and the gestures that accompany discourse....
. McGilchrist states: "What I began to see – and it was John Cutting's work on the right hemisphere that set me thinking – was that the difference lay not in what they [the two hemispheres] do, but how they do it." In the same interview, the author explains: "Some very subtle research by David McNeill, amongst others, confirms that thought originates in the right hemisphere, is processed for expression in speech by the left hemisphere, and the meaning integrated again by the right (which alone understands the overall meaning of a complex utterance, taking everything into account)."
The divided brain
In the first part, "The Divided Brain", McGilchrist describes the functioning of the left and right hemispheres of the brain and their respective and at times conflicting "world views". One of the core themes of the book is the importance of differentiation and integration, and of the integration of the two.Speaking about the book on the BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
Today programme, McGilchrist dismisses what he sees as some popular misconceptions about lateralization of brain function, such as one hemisphere handling reason and the other language (etc), stating that such processing involves both sides of the brain. McGilchrist points out that the idea that "reason [is] in the left hemisphere and something like creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
and emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
[are] in the right hemisphere" is an unhelpful misconception. He states that "every single brain function is carried out by both hemispheres. Reason and emotion and imagination depend on the coming together of what both hemispheres contribute." Nevertheless he does see an obvious dichotomy, and asks himself: "if the brain is all about making connections, why is it that it's evolved with this whopping divide down the middle?"
The author holds instead that each of the hemispheres of the brain has a different "take" on the world or produces a different "version" of the world, though under normal circumstances these work together. This, he says, is basically to do with attention. He illustrates this with the case of chicks which use the eye connected to the left hemisphere to attend to the fine detail of picking seeds from amongst grit, whilst the other eye attends to the broader threat from predators. According to the author, "The left hemisphere has its own agenda, to manipulate and use the world"; its world view is essentially that of a mechanism. The right has a broader outlook, "has no preconceptions, and simply looks out to the world for whatever might be. In other words it does not have any allegiance to any particular set of values."
Writing about the book in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, the philosopher Mary Midgley
Mary Midgley
Mary Midgley, née Scrutton , is an English moral philosopher. She was a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University and is known for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. She wrote her first book, Beast And Man: The Roots of Human Nature , when she was in her fifties...
explains that "The bifurcation seems to have become necessary in the first place because these two main functions – comprehensiveness and precision – are both necessary, but are too distinct to be combined."
McGilchrist explains this more fully in a later interview for ABC Radio National's
Radio National
ABC Radio National is an Australia-wide non-commercial radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.Radio National broadcasts national programming in areas that include news and current affairs, the arts, social issues, science, drama and comedy...
All in the Mind
All in the Mind (Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio)
All in the Mind is a weekly ABC Radio National program, hosted by Australian science journalist Natasha Mitchell, exploring the mind, brain and behaviour....
programme, stating: "The right hemisphere sees a great deal, but in order to refine it, and to make sense of it in certain ways---in order to be able to use what it understands of the world and to be able to manipulate the world---it needs to delegate the job of simplifying it and turning it into a usable form to another part of the brain" [the left hemisphere]. Though he sees this as an essential "double act", McGilchrist points to the problem that the left hemisphere has a "narrow, decontextualised and theoretically based model of the world which is self consistent and is therefore quite powerful" and to the problem of the left hemisphere's lack of awareness of its own shortcomings; whilst in contrast, the right hemisphere is aware that it is in a symbiotic
Symbiosis
Symbiosis is close and often long-term interaction between different biological species. In 1877 Bennett used the word symbiosis to describe the mutualistic relationship in lichens...
relationship. The neuroscientists Dennett and Kinsborne, for example, conducted experiments which involved temporarily deactivating one of the brain's hemispheres. In their research they found that "when completely false propositions are put to the left hemisphere it accepts them as valid because the internal structure of the argument is valid." However, the right hemisphere knows from experience that the propositions are false. McGilchrist further points out that where people have suffered a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
involving the right hemisphere of the brain, they tend to under-estimate or even deny that they have a disability. Again, research has shown that the right hemisphere tends to hold a more realistic personal assessment than the left.
Another issue that McGilchrist points out is that the two hemispheres "inhibit one-another across the corpus callosum" between the hemispheres when one of them is active. This he sees as a natural reciprocal action. However, the issue which arises is that the left hemisphere is better able to inhibit the right than [vice versa].
How the brain has shaped our world
In the second part, "How the Brain Has Shaped Our World", the author describes the evolution of Western culture, as influenced by hemispheric brain functioning, from the ancient world, through the RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
and Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
; the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
; Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
; to the modern and postmodern
Postmodernity
Postmodernity is generally used to describe the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity...
worlds which, to our detriment, are becoming increasingly dominated by the left brain.
In a lecture at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA), McGilchrist quotes Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
as saying "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." (McGilchrist does not specify where in Einstein's writings the quote can be found, however.)
According to McGilchrist, interviewed for ABC Radio National's
Radio National
ABC Radio National is an Australia-wide non-commercial radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.Radio National broadcasts national programming in areas that include news and current affairs, the arts, social issues, science, drama and comedy...
All in the Mind
All in the Mind (Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio)
All in the Mind is a weekly ABC Radio National program, hosted by Australian science journalist Natasha Mitchell, exploring the mind, brain and behaviour....
programme, rather than seeking to explain the social and cultural changes and structure of civilisation in terms of the brain — which would be reductionist
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
— he is pointing to a wider, more inclusive perspective and greater reality in which there are two competing ways of thinking and being, and that in modern Western society we appear increasingly to be able to only entertain one viewpoint: that of the left hemisphere.
The author argues that the brain and the mind do not simply experience the world, but that the world we experience is a product or meeting of that which is outside us with our mind. The outcome, the nature of this world, is thus dependent upon "which mode of attention we bring to bear on the world".
McGilchrist sees an occasional flowering of "the best of the right hemisphere and the best of the left hemisphere working together" in our history: as witnessed in Athens in the 6th century by activity in the humanities and in science and in ancient Rome during the Augustan
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
era. However, he also sees that as time passes, the left hemisphere once again comes to dominate affairs and things slide back into "a more theoretical and conceptualised abstracted bureaucratic
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
sort of view of the world." According to McGilchrist, the cooperative use of both left and right hemispheres diminished and became imbalanced in favour of the left in the time of the classical Greek philosophers Parmenides
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...
and Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
and in the late classical Roman era. This cooperation and openness were regained during the Renaissance 1,000 years later which brought "sudden efflorescence of creative life in the sciences and the arts". However, with the Reformation, the early Enlightenment, and what has followed as rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
has arisen, our world has once again become increasingly rigid, simplified and rule-bound.
Looking at more recent Western history, McGilchrist sees in the Industrial Revolution that for the first time artefacts were being made "very much to the way the left hemisphere sees the world — simple solids that are regular, repeated, not individual in the way that things that are made by hand are" and that a transformation of the environment in a similar vein followed on from that; that what was perceived inwardly was projected outwardly on a mass scale. The author argues that the scientific materialism which developed in the 19th century is still with us, at least in the biological sciences, though he sees physics as having moved on. McGilchrist does not see modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
and postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
as being in opposition to this, but also "symptomatic of a shift towards the left hemisphere's conception of the world", taking the idea that there is no absolute truth and turning that into "there is no truth at all", and he finds some of the movements' works of art "symptomatic of people whose right hemisphere is not working very well." McGilchrist cites the American psychologist Louis Sass, author of Madness and Modernism, pointing out that Sass "draws extensive parallels between the phenomena of modernism and postmodernism and of schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
", with things taken out of context and fragmented.
Asked in an interview whether he blamed the loss of "our relationship to beauty, to body, to spirit and art" on the left hemisphere, McGilchrist pointed to an article by Stanley Fish, entitled Does Reason Know what Reason Doesn't Know? and stated that the essence of the problem is "that the left hemisphere is not aware of what it is not aware of" and that the difficulty we are faced with is giving the right hemisphere a fair hearing. Whilst agreeing that beauty, spirit and art are not the sole preserve of the right hemisphere, the author does see a reductionism not only in science but in popular culture and a loss of "the power of art to alert us to things beyond ourselves", to the transcendent.
Asked whether he was giving the left hemisphere "too much flak", given that reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
and rationality
Rationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
formed the basis of modern, scientific society, McGilchrist stated that he believes that modern science began earlier than the Enlightenment and that there was "an enormously rich period in the 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries", as seen for example in "the spirit in science from Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
through to Goethe". McGilchrist went on to point out that "the left hemisphere is not devoid of feelings at all, it has its own range of emotions and the capacity to appreciate emotions." To the author, sequential reasoning and rationality are important. To argue that the right hemisphere is right and the left is wrong is an "either/or black and white misconception" which is in itself indicative of the left hemisphere's view of the world.
However, whilst the author appreciates that the left hemisphere "has evolved to help us use the world to achieve our ends", he nevertheless draws the conclusion that it is in denial and might be likened to a sleepwalker approaching an abyss.
Conclusions
According to a write up by the Scientific and Medical Network, McGilchrist's view is that whilst "traditionally the two hemispheres have worked together," in modern times the "Master" (the right brain hemisphere) has been betrayed by his "emissary" (the left hemisphere), which has "grabbed more than its fair share of power". The emissary is "in denial about its limitations", "misunderstands everything that is not explicit", "lacks empathy" and is mechanistic in outlook, at the expense of the more generous and understanding Master, which is unable to deal with this "onslaught".McGilchrist likens this to the story told by the German philosopher and philologist Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, which the author uses in the book's introduction and which sums up the central thrust of the work:
According to a review in The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, McGilchrist believes this usurping of control by the left brain has led to the creation of "a dehumanised society in the West, contributed to epidemics of schizophrenia and autism, caused environmental despoliation, and [also] given rise to some wilfully ugly modernist art and music."
Summing up his ideas on the two brain hemispheres at an RSA lecture, McGilchrist said: "The world of the left hemisphere, dependent on denotative language and abstraction, yields clarity and the power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualized, explicit, general in nature, but ultimately lifeless. The right hemisphere, by contrast, yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, never perfectly known, and to this world it exists in a certain relationship. The knowledge that is mediated by the left hemisphere is, however, in a closed system. It has the advantage of perfection, but the perfection is bought ultimately at the price of emptiness."
Reception
A review by Bryan AppleyardBryan Appleyard
Bryan Appleyard is a British journalist and author.- Career :Appleyard was educated at Bolton School and King’s College, Cambridge and after graduating with a degree in English, he became Financial News Editor and Deputy Arts Editor from 1976 to 1984 at The Times. Subsequently he became a...
in Times Online
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
describes the work as "A landmark new book [which] suggests we are thinking more and more like machines, and risk losing what makes us human."
David Cox in the London Evening Standard writes that the author is "a giant in his vital field [who] shows convincingly that the degeneracy of the West springs from our failure to manage the binary division of our brains."
David Lorimer writes in the Scientific and Medical Network's Network Review No 101 that "It is no exaggeration to say that this quite remarkable book will radically change the way you understand the world and yourself." Lorimer is of the opinion that the book is a "genuine tour de force, a monumental achievement – I can think of no one else who could have conceived, let alone written, a book of such penetrating brilliance.
Professor of philosophy A. C. Grayling
A. C. Grayling
Anthony Clifford Grayling is a British philosopher. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, a private undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991...
writes in the Literary Review
Literary Review
Literary Review is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at Edinburgh University. Its offices are currently on Lexington Street in Soho, London, and it has a circulation of 44,750. Britain's principal literary monthly, the magazine was...
that it is "A beautifully written, erudite, fascinating and adventurous book. It embraces a prodigious range of enquiry, from neurology to psychology, from philosophy to primatology, from myth to history to literature. It goes from the microstructure of the brain to great epochs of Western civilisation, confidently and readably. One turns its five hundred pages – a further hundred are dense with notes and references in tiny print – as if it were an adventure story ... McGilchrist tells us about the rapidly evolving technologies and experimental work in fascinating and lucid detail." However, his conclusion is less encouraging: "The fact is that the findings of brain science are nowhere near fine-grained enough yet to support the large psychological and cultural conclusions Iain McGilchrist draws from them. Absorbing and fascinating though the book is, it does not persuade one that returning our Western civilisation to the government of such supposed right-hemisphere possessions as religion and instinct would be anywhere near a good thing."
A review in The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
is critical in its assessment that the reader is "treated to some very loose talk and to generalisations of breathtaking sweep". Though the reviewer sees "a scintillating intelligence [...] at work" in the second part of the book, he states that "it has plainly become untethered from its moorings in brain science" and goes on to point out that the author provides no physiological evidence for his assertion that the pronounced left-right dichotomy is not present in Asian cultures. Finally, the reviewer concludes that "Mr (sic.) McGilchrist would not be unhappy to learn that what he has to say about the roles of the hemispheres in Western culture is simply a metaphor and is not literally true."
In The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, the philosopher Mary Midgley
Mary Midgley
Mary Midgley, née Scrutton , is an English moral philosopher. She was a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University and is known for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. She wrote her first book, Beast And Man: The Roots of Human Nature , when she was in her fifties...
writes that The Master and His Emissary is "a very remarkable book." She is of the opinion that "It is not [...] just one more glorification of feeling at the expense of thought. Rather, it points out the complexity, the divided nature of thought itself and asks about its connection with the structure of the brain." Going on to describe in detail the theories behind the book, she concludes that "though neurologists may well not welcome it because it asks them new questions, the rest of us will surely find it splendidly thought-provoking" and describes the explanations as "penetrating, lively, thorough and fascinating."
Professor Adam Zeman, consultant neurologist
Neurologist
A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...
, senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
on the medical and mystical
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
levels of consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, and author of A Portrait of the Brain and Consciousness: A User's Guide, writes in Standpoint
Standpoint (magazine)
Standpoint is a monthly British cultural and political magazine. Its premier issue was published at the end of May 2008 – the first launch of a major current affairs publication in the UK in more than a decade....
magazine that Iain McGilcrist's presentation is "immensely erudite". He finds the book "remarkable", written "with great clarity" and "a treasure chest of fascinating detail and memorable quotation." In Zeman's opinion, McGilchrist "extends [the] received wisdom with a hugely ambitious, absorbing and questionable thesis: the two hemispheres have radically contrasting personalities; that they live in a state of creative tension, sometimes declining into open war; and that their struggle for supremacy provides the key to understanding the major cultural movements of human history."
Writing in the Royal College of General Practitioners
Royal College of General Practitioners
The Royal College of General Practitioners is the professional body for general practitioners in the United Kingdom. The RCGP represents and supports GPs on key issues including licensing, education, training, research and clinical standards. It is the largest of the medical royal colleges, with...
's British Journal of General Practice in March 2010, James Willis is of the opinion that "Iain McGilchrist’s qualifications for his massive undertaking are ideal, perhaps unique." and that "[his] grasp of this vast field, and the depth of his philosophical and artistic insight, are staggering." The work "underpins, validates, explains a whole slew of intuitions about general practice and life."
W. F. Bynum, Professor Emeritus of the History of Medicine at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
, and former head of the Academic Unit of the Wellcome Centre, writes in The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
: "McGilchrist's careful analysis of how brains work is a veritable tour de force, gradually and skilfully revealed. I know of no better exposition of the current state of functional brain neuroscience."
In the April/May 2010 edition of Bookforum
Bookforum
Bookforum is a New York-based magazine devoted to books and the discussion of literature. It is edited by Albert Mobilio, Chris Lehmann, , and Michael Miller.-History: Bookforum was launched in 1994 as a literary supplement to Artforum...
, American author Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer is an American journalist who writes on the topics of psychology, neuroscience, and the relationship between science and the humanities...
writes "Like Jaynes, McGilchrist interprets human history as an unresolved quarrel between the left and right hemispheres." However, "distinct hemispheric talents lead McGilchrist to invert Jaynes's hypothesis. While Jaynes argued that the Greek gods were invented to explain the breakdown of the bicameral mind—our hemispheres were finally able to listen to each other—McGilchrist argues the opposite."
On 19 June 2010, McGilchrist was interviewed at length for ABC Radio National's
Radio National
ABC Radio National is an Australia-wide non-commercial radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.Radio National broadcasts national programming in areas that include news and current affairs, the arts, social issues, science, drama and comedy...
All in the Mind
All in the Mind (Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio)
All in the Mind is a weekly ABC Radio National program, hosted by Australian science journalist Natasha Mitchell, exploring the mind, brain and behaviour....
programme by the show's host, Natasha Mitchell. In the programme, McGilchrist describes and explains his work in detail. The interview is available as an audio podcast, together with a transcript, and further mp3 audio clips are available on the show's official blog.
In the journal Brain
Brain (journal)
Brain is a neurological journal published by Oxford University Press. It was edited by John Newsom-Davis from 1997 to 2004. Under his editorship it became one of the first scientific journals to go online. Since 2004 the journal is edited by Alastair Compston, Professor and Head of Department of...
in September 2010, Professor Andrew Scull writes that "It is no exaggeration to say that Part One of the book is a tour de force … [in Part Two] McGilchrist puts on display a remarkable erudition, an ability to discuss with intelligence and insight the history of Western art and literature, philosophy of a whole range of stripes, musicology (and the relationships between music and the brain), and the varieties of religious experience, just to mention a few of the topics he touches upon."
The Master and His Emissary was shortlisted for the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas
Bristol Festival of Ideas
The Bristol Festival of Ideas is a project established in Bristol, England, which aims to "to stimulate people’s minds and passions with an inspiring programme of discussion and debate"...
Book Prize. Currently one of the largest book prizes in the UK, the award is given annually to a book which presents new, important and challenging ideas, and which is engaging, accessible and rigorously argued. It was also longlisted for the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
2010 Prize for Science Books. The judges said of the book: "McGilchrist welcomes you straight into his world, without making too many presumptions about what you already know, presenting beautiful ideas in an eminently readable and engrossing manner."
In the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
in January 2011, Harry Eyres describes The Master and His Emissary as "a fascinating book", and is of the opinion that McGilchrist "is a subtle and clever thinker, and unusually qualified to range with such authority over so many different domains of knowledge."
Reviewing The Master and His Emissary in the American Journal of Psychiatry
American Journal of Psychiatry
The American Journal of Psychiatry is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal covering all aspects of psychiatry and the official journal of the American Psychiatric Association. The first volume was issued in 1844, at which time it was known as the American Journal of Insanity...
in June 2011, Jacob Freedman, M.D. informs his readers that: "In essence, Iain McGilchrist's book is an exploration of the link between the brain's hemispheric asymmetry and the historical development of Western society. This is no small task: chronicling how the left brain's determined reductionism and the right brain's insightful and holistic approach have shaped music, language, politics, and art." The first half of the book, Freedman says, "provides a thorough understanding of brain lateralization", and in the second half, "the author takes his framework of the left hemisphere's self-obsessed reductionism and the right hemisphere's empathic holism and tries to "understand the structure of the world that the brain has in part created." Freedman is of the opinion that The Master and His Emissary is an "epic", "brilliantly written book that valiantly addresses the effect hemispheric asymmetry has had on Western civilization" and that "while the author quotes Ramachandran
Ramachandran
The Tamil/ Malayali name Ramachandran can refer to:* A. Ramachandran , Indian painter* Chakolath Ramachandran , senior Indian Administrative Service officer in Tamil Nadu* G...
and Heidegger more frequently than Freud and Bleuler, The Master and His Emissary is still certainly a relevant book for any psychiatrist (and any neuroscientist or philosopher for that matter)."
See also
- AutismAutismAutism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...
- Clinical neurophysiologyClinical neurophysiologyClinical neurophysiology is a medical specialty that studies the central and peripheral nervous systems through the recording of bioelectrical activity, whether spontaneous or stimulated....
- DehumanizationDehumanizationDehumanization is to make somebody less human by taking away his or her individuality, the creative and interesting aspects of his or her personality, or his or her compassion and sensitivity towards others. Dehumanization may be directed by an organization or may be the composite of individual...
- John CuttingJohn Cutting (psychiatrist)Dr. John Charles Cutting, who writes as Dr. John Cutting , is a British psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia research...
(influence) - Julian JaynesJulian JaynesJulian Jaynes was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind , in which he argued that ancient peoples were not conscious....
, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral MindBicameralism (psychology)Bicameralism is a hypothesis in psychology that argues that the human brain once assumed a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind...
(1976) - David McNeillDavid McNeill (Chicago psychologist)Professor David McNeill is an American psychologist and writer specializing in scientific research into psycholinguistics and especially the relationship of language to thought, and the gestures that accompany discourse....
(influence) - MetaphorMetaphorA metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
- ModernismModernismModernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
- Mind and brain (portal)
- NeurologyNeurologyNeurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...
- NeuropsychologyNeuropsychologyNeuropsychology studies the structure and function of the brain related to specific psychological processes and behaviors. The term neuropsychology has been applied to lesion studies in humans and animals. It has also been applied to efforts to record electrical activity from individual cells in...
- NeuroscienceNeuroscienceNeuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
- Robert E. Ornstein
- Philosophy of mindPhilosophy of mindPhilosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
- SchizophreniaSchizophreniaSchizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
- Sociocultural evolutionSociocultural evolutionSociocultural evolution is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have changed over time...
Lectures
Parts of this lecture were republished by the RSA in October 2011 as one of a series of "RSA Animates" with cartoonist Andrew Park's illustrations. The ten minute animation accompanying McGilchrist's talk took Park two months to complete.Other reviews
Translation: "Study: right and left cerebral hemispheres have opposite personalities." Vernon, a writer, journalist and columnist with The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, writes: "At last! A book on neuroscience that is a thrilling read, philosophically astute and with wonderful science."