Rate this book

The Master And His Emissary: The Divided Brain And The Making Of The Western World (2009)

by Iain McGilchrist(Favorite Author)

4.29 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

030014878X (ISBN13: 9780300148787)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Yale University Press

review 1: This is clearly a work that required an immense amount of research- about 20 years to write. This is not a book to be read over a long weekend. A slow read is essential with re-reading parts as you go. It took me about 18 months to read.The author limits his study to the brain of people living in the western world. McGilchrist's understanding of how world history and neuroscience interrelate is astounding. Avoid U-tube talks until you finish the book.The two hemispheres of our brain are like two people who must live together- and each hemisphere constantly struggle to have the upper hand on decision making. Only today I read of how we people try and justify our belief in the sources or causes of painful arthritis. I could just see the left hemisphere of advocates of this... more belief driven to uphold historical nonsense about weather - rain and air pressure making our joints ache. But, it is through open minded research using both the liberated right hemisphere in conjunction with the facts contained in the left hemisphere that we conclude that we really do not know if weather really affects our joints. (I digress).In reading this work there is room to compare the thoughts of Professor Kahneman's Thinking, fast and slow.
review 2: Over the course of thousands of years, the human animal has increasingly become the self-conscious animal, growing ever more enchanted with the mysteries of how and why we think. Neuroscience has lately become our greatest hope, it seems, for solving this ancient mystery, and Iain McGilchrist worked for twenty years on the problem of self-consciousness. In examining the problem, he crossed boundaries between the sciences and the humanities, relying upon brain imagery and numerous studies while also delving into aesthetics theory, continental philosophy, art history, religion studies, and cultural theory. The result is this wide-ranging, deeply considered magnum opus, The Master and His Emissary. Think of it as a users manual for the animal brain and the human mind, both. It’s required reading for anyone who wants to understand how they think, who would rather learn the sources and causes of anxiety than take a pill to dispel it.The book is long, the argument is powerful, and the scholarship is beyond reproach. Fortunately, McGilchrist is also an exceptionally lucid writer of readable, even enjoyable prose. In him, the soul of an art lover comes together with the method of a scientist and the clear, deep thought of a philosopher. Basically, he argues that human thought follows a certain pattern: We all have access to two ways of perceiving the world, which are most likely tied to the two hemispheres of our brains, and Western culture is suffering a perilous imbalance toward one of those ways of thinking. With respect to “the nature of the world that each [hemisphere] brings into being,” McGilchrist demonstrates that “the right hemisphere’s vision is more global and holistic, based on the recognition of similarity with an ideal exemplar, and on where this is positioned in the context of other examples, whereas the left hemisphere identifies single features that would place the object in a certain category in the abstract.” One part of us focuses on granular details from which it tries to build a picture of the whole (like making a tree out of leaves and sticks and bark), while another part of us takes in a vision of the whole and identifies individuals within it (like recognizing a pine tree in the forest, or picking a friend’s face out of the crowd).McGilchrist proposes that the right hemisphere, which is responsible for our vision of the whole context, is the metaphorical master who labors in the background, while the left hemisphere is the emissary sent into the world to manage the master’s affairs. He argues persuasively that our conscious minds work best, and we as a culture thrive, when these two ways of thinking work in harmony with one another. But the left hemisphere, the emissary, tends to betray its master, tends to seize power for itself and deny its master’s existence. McGilchrist points out all the shortcomings and delusions to which the left hemisphere is prone: it demands certainty rather than ambiguity; it insists upon literal meanings for language and art rather than suggestive meanings; it deals poorly with metaphors and always tries to simplify them; it deals better with the abstract world than it does with the concrete, embodied world. The personality profile that McGilchrist’s description suggests is bound to remind readers of people they know, most likely their bureaucratic bosses or their fundamentalist friends or rationalist acquaintances. Readers familiar with cultural theory will also see reflections of Western culture in the left brain’s way of thinking. The book is divided into two parts. Part one outlines the major distinctions between the way each hemisphere conceives the world. Taken from neurobiology and brain scanning data and numerous psychological studies, this section is heavy on science and is meticulously cited (the book includes about 54 pages of endnotes). This is where I learned why melancholy and empathy seem like natural companions on one hand, while calculation and detachment are companions on the other. This section is filled with fascinating case studies of stroke patients who suffered a variety of brain lesions and changed in significant ways, based on which hemisphere had been damaged. Some patients even deny that their left arm is their own, claiming a doctor left it in their bed. (This happens when the right hemisphre is damaged, disrupting the patient’s sense of their own body’s integrity.) This section also includes some handy tests to determine whether you’re schizophrenic. Now, as a young teacher, a student sometimes asked a question I couldn’t answer, and I occasionally caught myself making up answers. That was a habit borne in my left hemisphere (and I’ve thankfully overcome it). Whenever I happily concede that I don’t know the answer to a question, or whenever I am uncertain about things, that’s my right hemisphere talking. This is also the part where McGilchrist explains why more realistic people tend to be sadder, and why more empathic people are also sadder, while those who demand positive attitudes at all times tend to practice more denial and overestimate their control of the world.In part two, McGilchrist interprets history through the lens of these neurobiological insights. He traces artistic and intellectual movements from the ancient world through the postmodern twentieth century, uncovering a back-and-forth pattern between the world view favored by the right hemisphere and the one favored by the left. He makes a persuasive case that in Greek culture the right hemisphere’s influence was rising, while Roman culture reveals a left hemisphere ascendence. McGilchrist likewise interprets all the major movements, from the Restoration through the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic, Modern, and Post-modern eras. Any American philosopher or reader who is familiar with continental philosophy will recognize McGilchrist’s affinity for that style of thought, and the end notes from part two read like a bibliography of the field’s greatest names, like Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Foucault, and Gadamer. I happened to be familiar with a lot of these writers’ work, which helped immensely in following McGilchrist’s argument here. Those who haven’t read their work might find this section less persuasive or compelling. Nonetheless, there does seem to be a strong, right hemispheric pattern across the thought of these diverse writers.Can it be just a coincidence? Then why does their thinking also resonate with the aspirations of artists across all media? Here’s an example: “For Merleau-Ponty, truth is arrived at through engagement with the world, not through greater abstraction from it; the general is encountered through, rather than in spite of, the finite” so that “the artist [did] not merely reflect what was there anyway, albeit in a novel way, but actually ‘brought into being a truth’ about the world that was not there before, perhaps the best example of the universal being manifest through the particular.” As that quotation demonstrates, part two is also where McGilchrist brings musicians, playwrights, painters, poets and aestheticians into the discussion, revealing how they frequently represent a right hemispheric view of the world in their artworks. This is the complement to the left hemisphere’s rationalist, scientific world view—the culture and beauty that support, even contextualize our analysis and our calculations.McGilchrist clearly sees the strength of both hemispheres’ perspectives. He outlines their proper relationship as one of give and take, helping us to see how we might become more fully human. How can we bring the two hemispheres together in order to live with integrity? The basic strategy is here, in his assessment of philosophy: “I believe that, despite appearances, philosophy begins and ends in the right hemisphere, though it has to journey through the left hemisphere on its way.” To put it another way, consider one of McGilchrist’s favorite metaphors for the process: think of an artist, like the legendary dancer Fred Astaire, who practiced his choreography to an unprecedented and heroic degree. Custodians of the movie lot regularly reported seeing Astaire practice through the night, emerging sweaty and exhausted in the early morning. Astaire was taking his body’s intuitive movements (right hemisphere) and sending them to his analytical self (left hemisphere) to break the movements down, learn and practice them step by step. In order to perform the dance, however, and to be the light-on-his-feet professional who stunned viewers, Astaire had to send all that training back into his intuition (right hemisphere). The result was a dance that looked spontaneous, completely hiding the hours of practice and toil that went into developing it. Readers who favor a left brain, rationalistic, logical world view will inevitably object to McGilchrist’s argument and ignore many of his conclusions. That attitude is evident in some of the reviews you can read on this web site. I once gave a talk where a rationalist philosopher left the room as soon as I mentioned Michele Foucault—I can only imagine the rage that man would unleash upon McGilchrist. However, none of this relieves rationalist thinking from its many limitations, or repairs the damage it has wrought. When Descartes severed the head from the body, he attempted to abstract the world out of existence. “I think, therefore I am,” he said, as if that thinking weren’t being done with a body, living in an embodied world. Descarte’s emphasis on thinking over embodied existence lead Western culture to an insistence on rational thinking above all other types (left hemisphere). McGilchrist carefully demonstrates how “rationalistic systems contain the seeds of their own destruction. [. . .] There are always elements that arise within the system (rationally conceived goals) that cannot be achieved by the system (rational means of pursuit), and that indeed draw our attention to the limits of the system, and point us beyond it.” Have you ever tried to fall asleep? Setting yourself the goal of falling asleep and then consciously, rationally striving for sleep leads to guaranteed insomnia. The left hemisphere wants to either grasp things or create them. But in many cases this strategy is doomed to failure, for “the left hemisphere, despite its view of itself as bringing things about, can only say ‘no’ or not say ‘no’ to what it finds given to it by the right hemisphere (just as the right hemisphere in turn can only say no or not to ‘the Other,’ whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves).” I urge anyone with a brain whose workings they want to understand: Don’t say no to this massive, important work. less

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

Advertising