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inquiry_from_an_anti_library's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
2.0
Is This An Overview?
The brain has hemispheres that are involved in every task. But, the way in which the hemispheres are involved are different. Their roles are different. They deal with the same information in different ways. The different roles of the hemispheres enable the brain to function effectively, but the differences also provide different experiences of reality which creates conflict. They have different values and priorities. They function well when cooperating, but their competition with each other creates friction. Problems occur when giving prominence to a hemisphere over another. The problems occurring due to the conflict are felt indirectly, through culture. Social problems develop through lack of tolerance at other methods of thinking, as they appear incompatible, with the other being wrong.
Caveats?
This book contains a myriad of different cultural and philosophical references. Prior knowledge of the references would enable the reader to better understand the book. References that can be interpreted to favor the primary claims about the hemispheric differences.
aadhikari's review against another edition
5.0
I know very little of neuroscience beyond what I’ve read in this book and I have no way of knowing if the brain’s two hemispheres function exactly as described here. But that didn’t really matter for my appreciation of this work. Beyond an account of the functioning of the brain, The Master and the Emissary offers a rich account of two modes of human experience which are both complementary and oppositional. The account accorded with my own intuitions and clarified much of my own experience. As with most works of of large-scale system building, it seems likely that much of the book's specifics might be discredited by further research. But the staggering ambition of the work is part of what makes is so interesting. I think its relevant that McGilchrist is an independent scholar – I doubt such a work is producible within the academy. I have never read anything by an author so deeply immersed in scientific research who simultaneously possessed such a deep grasp of the humanities. I am used to scientists dismissing philosophers like Hegel, Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger, so it was refreshing to see McGilchrist engage deeply with their work and present a convincing account of how it sheds light on brain function and human experience.
The second part of the book, which analyses the entire history of western culture through the lens of the divided brain, could very easily have degenerated into a selective and potted history. And I am in fact more skeptical of the second part than the first, as I am of all attempts to demonstrate how biological reality shapes human culture. (I am not saying I don’t think links exist between the two, just that our knowledge is too fragmented and partial to provide a sweeping account over thousands of years.) But still there is much that is provocative here, and McGilchrist is nuanced enough to anticipate criticism. I agree with his criticism in the book's later sections of modern art's tendency towards greater abstraction and the move away from intuition in the pursuit of novelty. But I fear that some of the later sections, the one on modernism and post-modernism particularly, could lend grist to the ignorant online right-wing philistines who extol western classical art and culture while denigrating anything modern. This is not to say that McGilchrist has much in common which such people – his own understanding of modernist art is in fact sophisticated and he expresses appreciation for several modernist writers and musicians. Nonetheless, one could quibble with many of his characterizations. For example, he mentions Beckett as a writer particularly prone to an alienated, left-hemisphere orientation. But I think that Beckett, with his emphasis on bodily movement and the subterranean movements of the mind, could easily be shown to have expanded literature in the direction of a right-hemisphere orientation, just as McGilchrist says Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger did for philosophy.
The second part of the book, which analyses the entire history of western culture through the lens of the divided brain, could very easily have degenerated into a selective and potted history. And I am in fact more skeptical of the second part than the first, as I am of all attempts to demonstrate how biological reality shapes human culture. (I am not saying I don’t think links exist between the two, just that our knowledge is too fragmented and partial to provide a sweeping account over thousands of years.) But still there is much that is provocative here, and McGilchrist is nuanced enough to anticipate criticism. I agree with his criticism in the book's later sections of modern art's tendency towards greater abstraction and the move away from intuition in the pursuit of novelty. But I fear that some of the later sections, the one on modernism and post-modernism particularly, could lend grist to the ignorant online right-wing philistines who extol western classical art and culture while denigrating anything modern. This is not to say that McGilchrist has much in common which such people – his own understanding of modernist art is in fact sophisticated and he expresses appreciation for several modernist writers and musicians. Nonetheless, one could quibble with many of his characterizations. For example, he mentions Beckett as a writer particularly prone to an alienated, left-hemisphere orientation. But I think that Beckett, with his emphasis on bodily movement and the subterranean movements of the mind, could easily be shown to have expanded literature in the direction of a right-hemisphere orientation, just as McGilchrist says Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger did for philosophy.
thejdizzler's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
This has got to be one of the best books I've read ever. McGilchrist's central thesis is that we are divided individuals: each hemisphere of our brain has a different way of seeing the world, and these two "ways of being" are often fundamentally incompatible with each other. The left hemisphere takes an incredibly detailed, but mechanistic and often abstracted view of reality. The right hemisphere by contrast is better at taking a big picture view of things: it is through this hemisphere that we understand art and music, appreciate individual differences and make sense of our own existence at a fundamental level. In McGilchrist's view the proper relationship between these two hemispheres is that of Master and Emissary (his central metaphor). The right hemisphere notices some facet of experience, the left hemisphere interrogates that aspect of experience in a more mechanistic and rational manner, and then this is in turn reintegrated back into the holistic experience of the right hemisphere.
However, in our society, this asymmetry has been broken. The left hemisphere is fundamentally unable to understand the perspective of the right, and as McGilchrist has chronicled in this book, has gradually been taking ground from the right hemisphere. This has lead to a society with an inability to treat others as human beings, rather as mechanistic flesh robots, and the loss of meaning in religion, and the arts. The master has been led away in chains, to return to McGilchrist's central metaphor, borrowed from Nietzsche.
This book touched on a feeling I've been having for a long time about our society. Since my freshman year at MIT, where I stopped being satisfied with good grades, fast times, and material consumption, I've been skeptical of the materialism inherent in almost all answers given to us in our search for meaning. I remember a particular moment when I entered into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and saw the light shining down onto Christ's tomb from a skylight. I was immediately filled with a sense of wonder, and a conviction that there was something about the place that was divine. Yet not a minute later, my mind was filled with sneering skepticism about the engineering of the building being designed to give me that experience. The backlash to that backlash was a moment that I think changed my life: I no longer wanted to be the kind of person that would dismiss profound spiritual experiences because I could explain them mechanistically. Yes, there is a place for logic and rationalism in our search for truth, but only in service to our intuition and faith in something larger than ourselves. Maybe there's a reason why almost all societies have posited something along the lines of eternal recurrence and reincarnation. Maybe there's a reason why we feel so depressed in the modern West without our traditions and spiritual practices. Maybe science isn't the only way to truth.
I'm not sure exactly what to change about my life as a result of this book. Specific actions, in any case, seem to be the domain of the left hemisphere, not the right. Rather, I need to shift my worldview. Less focus on metrics and deliverables, or more on living differently. Less "rational" self-help, and more reading of thinkers like Kierkegaard, Fromm, Unamuno, and of fiction. More connecting with individuals, online, in real life, or through literature, and less with abstract principles.
I'm also very grateful to have read this with Tessa, Amanda, and Logan. Philosophy book club keeps bearing fruit.
However, in our society, this asymmetry has been broken. The left hemisphere is fundamentally unable to understand the perspective of the right, and as McGilchrist has chronicled in this book, has gradually been taking ground from the right hemisphere. This has lead to a society with an inability to treat others as human beings, rather as mechanistic flesh robots, and the loss of meaning in religion, and the arts. The master has been led away in chains, to return to McGilchrist's central metaphor, borrowed from Nietzsche.
This book touched on a feeling I've been having for a long time about our society. Since my freshman year at MIT, where I stopped being satisfied with good grades, fast times, and material consumption, I've been skeptical of the materialism inherent in almost all answers given to us in our search for meaning. I remember a particular moment when I entered into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and saw the light shining down onto Christ's tomb from a skylight. I was immediately filled with a sense of wonder, and a conviction that there was something about the place that was divine. Yet not a minute later, my mind was filled with sneering skepticism about the engineering of the building being designed to give me that experience. The backlash to that backlash was a moment that I think changed my life: I no longer wanted to be the kind of person that would dismiss profound spiritual experiences because I could explain them mechanistically. Yes, there is a place for logic and rationalism in our search for truth, but only in service to our intuition and faith in something larger than ourselves. Maybe there's a reason why almost all societies have posited something along the lines of eternal recurrence and reincarnation. Maybe there's a reason why we feel so depressed in the modern West without our traditions and spiritual practices. Maybe science isn't the only way to truth.
I'm not sure exactly what to change about my life as a result of this book. Specific actions, in any case, seem to be the domain of the left hemisphere, not the right. Rather, I need to shift my worldview. Less focus on metrics and deliverables, or more on living differently. Less "rational" self-help, and more reading of thinkers like Kierkegaard, Fromm, Unamuno, and of fiction. More connecting with individuals, online, in real life, or through literature, and less with abstract principles.
I'm also very grateful to have read this with Tessa, Amanda, and Logan. Philosophy book club keeps bearing fruit.
follyforhire's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
endpaper's review against another edition
5.0
Easily the most important and great non-fiction book I read this year. Cannot recommend highly enough. A masterwork.
Such an incredible and dense book that I had to read it again. The most important scholarly work of the last twenty years.
Such an incredible and dense book that I had to read it again. The most important scholarly work of the last twenty years.
allisonjpmiller's review against another edition
5.0
You don't need to be convinced by McGilchrist's thesis to benefit immensely from reading this magnum opus (though I'd love to read a counter argument that manages to approach the same level of erudition and nuance ... I'm serious, point me to one! Is it possible?!). The back of the book contains over 150 pages of citations written in such tiny print that even my PRK-perfect eyes strained to read them, indicating not only how thoroughly researched and well-supported his arguments are, but also just how much wisdom he has to share with you from every discipline imaginable. He's the best kind of polymath: someone equally well-versed in the intuitive, implicit realm of art (he taught literature at Oxford before entering medicine) as in the more explicit realm of science.
In true right-hemisphere fashion, McGilchrist doesn't rely on his own ideas or even his current field (neuroscience) alone to arrive at a coherent picture of the Western world and its descent into unreality, but draws on thousands of voices from the annals of history, literature, philosophy, religion, ethics, physics, psychology, anthropology, etc—acknowledging the movements within each, and helping the reader discern patterns of perception encompassing them that would be difficult to even begin to notice without the depth and richness of an integrated view. Which is precisely the function the right hemisphere performs for a healthy brain: contextualization. That's what we lose, McG says, when we begin perceiving things primarily in parts rather than wholes (as is the case in our present, left-hemisphere-dominant society)—when we reduce the world and ourselves to mechanisms, rather than seeing them as living, evolving, interdependent entities that are ultimately unknowable except through an active I-thou relationship.
Among the many insights this book has gifted me, the fact that the brain reacts to a work of art the same way it reacts to seeing/hearing a living thing makes so much intuitive sense of the way in which books, music, the visual arts, etc seem to have their own ongoing life independent of their creators ... and why our experience of each work is so dependent on the unique relationship we develop with it, rather than any "objective" statement that can be made about the elements that constitute it. (This is also why lit/art theory, for all it's contributed to the academic study of these fields, is fundamentally maddening: It's an intrusion of the left hemisphere's obsession with systematic thinking on something that categorically resists it.)
Another thing I can't stop thinking about and seeing everywhere I look, now: cynicism and gullibility are close bedfellows, neurologically speaking.
I could go on. But I have 1,300 more pages of McGilchrist ([b:The Matter With Things|58955313|The Matter With Things Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World|Iain McGilchrist|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1641262000l/58955313._SX50_.jpg|92917408]) to read. What can I say? In an insane world, sanity is addictive.
In true right-hemisphere fashion, McGilchrist doesn't rely on his own ideas or even his current field (neuroscience) alone to arrive at a coherent picture of the Western world and its descent into unreality, but draws on thousands of voices from the annals of history, literature, philosophy, religion, ethics, physics, psychology, anthropology, etc—acknowledging the movements within each, and helping the reader discern patterns of perception encompassing them that would be difficult to even begin to notice without the depth and richness of an integrated view. Which is precisely the function the right hemisphere performs for a healthy brain: contextualization. That's what we lose, McG says, when we begin perceiving things primarily in parts rather than wholes (as is the case in our present, left-hemisphere-dominant society)—when we reduce the world and ourselves to mechanisms, rather than seeing them as living, evolving, interdependent entities that are ultimately unknowable except through an active I-thou relationship.
Among the many insights this book has gifted me, the fact that the brain reacts to a work of art the same way it reacts to seeing/hearing a living thing makes so much intuitive sense of the way in which books, music, the visual arts, etc seem to have their own ongoing life independent of their creators ... and why our experience of each work is so dependent on the unique relationship we develop with it, rather than any "objective" statement that can be made about the elements that constitute it. (This is also why lit/art theory, for all it's contributed to the academic study of these fields, is fundamentally maddening: It's an intrusion of the left hemisphere's obsession with systematic thinking on something that categorically resists it.)
Another thing I can't stop thinking about and seeing everywhere I look, now: cynicism and gullibility are close bedfellows, neurologically speaking.
I could go on. But I have 1,300 more pages of McGilchrist ([b:The Matter With Things|58955313|The Matter With Things Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World|Iain McGilchrist|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1641262000l/58955313._SX50_.jpg|92917408]) to read. What can I say? In an insane world, sanity is addictive.