The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World 0th Edition

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World 0th Edition
Author: Visit ‘s Iain McGilchrist Page ID: 030014878X

From Publishers Weekly

A U.K. mental health consultant and clinical director with a background in literature, McGilchrist attempts to synthesize his two areas of expertise, arguing that the “divided and asymmetrical nature” of the human brain is reflected in the history of Western culture. Part I, The Divided Brain, lays the groundwork for his thesis, examining two lobes’ significantly different features (structure, sensitivity to hormones, etc.) and separate functions (the left hemisphere is concerned with “what,” the right with “how”). He suggests that music, “ultimately… the communication of emotion,” is the “ancestor of language,” arising largely in the right hemisphere while “the culture of the written word tends inevitably toward the predominantly left hemisphere.” More controversially, McGilchrist argues that “there is no such thing as the brain” as such, only the brain as we perceive it; this leads him to conclude that different periods of Western civilization (from the Homeric epoch to the present), one or the other hemisphere has predominated, defining “consistent ways of being that persist” through time. This densely argued book is aimed at an academic crowd, is notable for its sweep but a stretch in terms of a uniting thesis.
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Review

“McGilchrist describes broad [intellectual] movements and famous figures as if they were battles and soldiers in a 2,500-year war between the brain’s hemispheres. . . A scintillating intelligence is at work. . .” – Economist

 

(Economist 2009-11-26)

“A landmark new book. . . It tells a story you need to hear, of where we live now.”— Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times

(Bryan Appleyard The Sunday Times)

“This is a very remarkable book. . . McGilchrist, who is both an experienced psychiatrist and a shrewd philosopher, looks at the relation between our two brain-hemispheres in a new light, not just as an interesting neurological problem but as a crucial shaping factor in our culture. . . splendidly thought-provoking. . . . I couldn’t put it down.”–Mary Midgley, The Guardian

(Mary Midgley The Guardian)

“A beautifully written, erudite, fascinating, and adventurous book. It goes from the microstructure of the brain to great epochs of Western civilisation, confidently and readably. One turns its five hundred pages . . . as if it were an adventure story.” — A. C. Grayling,  Literary Review

(A.C. Grayling Literary Review)

“It is no exaggeration to say that this quite remarkable book will radically change the way you understand the world and yourself. . . . It is a genuine tour de force, a monumental achievement.”–David Lorimer, Scientific and Medical Network Review

(David Lorimer Scientific and Medical Network Review)

“Absolutely fascinating.”–Jessa Crispin, Editor of Bookslut.com

(Jessa Crispin Bookslut.com)

“At last! A book on neuroscience that is a thrilling read, philosophically astute and with wonderful science.”–Mark Vernon, Philosophy and Life blog
 

(Mark Vernon Philosophy and Life blog)

‘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 I do have to say that, fat though it is, I couldn’t put it down.’ — The London Review of Books

(The London Review of Books 2010-02-01)

“Hugely ambitious.”–Jonah Lehrer, Bookforum
 

(Jonah Lehrer Bookforum)

“To call Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary. . . an account of brain hemispheres is to woefully misrepresent its range. McGilchrist. . . persuasively argues that our society is suffering from the consequences of an over-dominant left hemisphere losing touch with its natural regulative ‘master,’ the right.”– Salley Vicker, The Guardian

(Salley Vicker The Guardian)

Named one of the best books of 2010 by The Guardian (Best Books of 2010 Guardian)

“This insightful, erudite and thought-provoking examination of the brain’s hemispheres can change how you see (or think you see) the world.”–PopMatters

(PopMatters)

“In his fascinating, groundbreaking, relentlessly researched, and eloquently written work, Iain McGilchrist, a consultant psychiatrist as well as professor of English—one wants to say a ‘scientist’ as well as an ‘artist’—challenges this misconception. The difference between the hemispheres, McGilchrist argues, is not in what they do, but in how they do it. And it’s a difference that makes all the difference.”—Gary Lachman, Los Angeles Times

(Gary Lachman Los Angeles Times)

“That a book can lead me to question myself is praise indeed—I can think of no higher recommendation. Like any really interesting book, it is to be valued more for this than for any answers it gives.”—Felix Dux, Parabola

(Felix Dux Parabola)

See all Editorial Reviews

Hardcover: 608 pagesPublisher: Yale University Press (December 15, 2009)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 030014878XISBN-13: 978-0300148787 Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 2.2 inches Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds Best Sellers Rank: #453,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #315 in Books > Textbooks > Medicine & Health Sciences > Medicine > Basic Sciences > Neuroscience #325 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Psychology > Neuropsychology #513 in Books > Textbooks > Science & Mathematics > Biology & Life Sciences > Anatomy & Physiology
Ian McGilchrist’s thick book on the "divided brain" is the most interesting book I’ve read this year. I’d come to regard the fabled right brain/left brain antithesis as so much entertaining pop psychology (e.g., Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future) — handy for provoking corporate robots, but hardly more than a convenient fiction. McGilchrist has convinced me that it’s a metaphor worth taking seriously, that in fact it may be the fundamental metaphor for a scientistic age.

McGilchrist’s thesis is simple: the right hemisphere of the brain (the "Master" of his title) provides our primary connection to the world – to whatever is outside ourselves; the left hemisphere is its Emissary, breaking wholes into parts, analyzing and abstracting, devising categories, names and theories, then returning the results of its investigations to the right brain to be integrated into lived experience. The health of both individuals and civilizations depends upon the reciprocal connection. The problem is that the left brain, which imagines it "knows" things it can’t possibly know, usurps its role and projects its own partial, definite vision of the world onto the world’s essentially ambiguous reality.

Stated simply (and the above is my own wording for McGilchrist’s argument) I risk making the book sound as if it was written by a crank with an overweening metaphor. Nothing could be further from the truth. The book, which begins by examining a huge range of neurological research on the brain, then examines how the structure of the brain has affected (nothing less than!
Iain McGilchrist `The Master and His Emissary’ : For sceptics and careful investors

Recent decades constitute a golden age for brain research, using new technology and methods. However, this gold has too often been mixed with lead, and even mud. Some have clung stubbornly to quickly outdated research, while others have aimed to cash-in on the prestige and fascination of such research by exploiting (sometimes for psycho-political as well as commercial purposes) half-truths and misunderstandings. At one extreme the brain becomes a fetish, while at another extreme it seems smart to speak of the allegedly obvious as `a no-brainer’. Hence, when a new, big, brain-book attracts such enthusiastic acclaim as this one, it is only prudent to be mindful of the need for caution.

Happily, Iain McGilchrist has provided on a personal website ([…]) not only summaries of his qualifications, experience and commitments, but also his book’s complete and illuminating Introduction (about 15 pages), along with his table of contents and chapters. The caution, and respect for evidence and argument – as well as for his readers, to be found in this introduction are sufficient to show that he is an outstanding thinker, as well as researcher, polymath, cultural critic and humanistic practitioner, who deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt by any prospective purchaser. He is a genuinely interdisciplinary thinker, who – just because he appreciates disciplinary boundaries – is well prepared to cross them responsibly in developing his argument and insights.

Another impressively reliable reviewer, in addition to those already available on the site, is the great moral philosopher, interpreter of life-sciences, and cultural critic Mary Midgley.
I agree with all the previous reviews of this remarkable book. As I was reading, I kept track of the specific elements of each of the hemispheres that McGilchrist cites in this well researched book. I thought I would share this with the readers:
A very partial summary of the nature of the left hemisphere could be as follows: it has an emphasis on doing, on things mechanistic, of the "whatness" of things; it is interested purely in functions and can only see things in context. The LH is not interested in living things. It does not understand metaphor and deals with pieces of information but cannot see the gestalt of situations. It recognizes the familiar and is not the hemisphere that attends to the "new", therefore it searches for what it already understands to categorize and nail down, often with (another of its characteristics) an unreasonable certainty of itself. Remember, it can’t observe anything outside of its own confines. Since it prefers the known, it attempts to repackage new information (if unaided by the RH) as familiar – a kind of re-presenting the experience. It positively prefers (and defends!) what it knows! The LH tends to deny discrepancies that do not fit its already generated schema of things. It creates "a sort of self-reflexive virtual world" according to McGilchrist. Additionally, it is "regional" and focuses narrowly. The metaphor for its structure is vertical. It brings an attention that isolates, fixes and makes things explicit by bringing it under the spotlight of attention. It helps us to be grounded and "in life", looks for repetition and commonality between things without which we would drift and be unable to understand our experiences since all would be continuously new.
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