The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist (PDF)

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A pioneering exploration of the differences between the brain’s right and left hemispheres and their effects on society, history, and culture—”one of the few contemporary works deserving classic status” (Nicholas Shakespeare, The Times, London)“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. Brilliant and disturbing.”—Salley Vickers, a Guardian Best Book of the Year”I know of no better exposition of the current state of functional brain neuroscience.”—W. F. Bynum, TLSWhy is the brain divided? The difference between right and left hemispheres has been puzzled over for centuries. Drawing upon a vast body of brain research, the renowned psychiatrist, author, and thinker Iain McGilchrist reveals that the difference between the two sides is profound—two whole, coherent, but incompatible ways of experiencing the world. The detail-oriented left hemisphere prefers mechanisms to living things and is inclined to self-interest, while the right hemisphere has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity.In the second part of his book, McGilchrist takes the reader on a journey through the history of Western culture, illustrating the tension between these two worlds as revealed in the thought and belief of thinkers and artists from the ancient to the modern, from Aeschylus to Magritte. He ultimately argues that, despite its inferior grasp of reality, the left hemisphere is increasingly taking precedence in today’s world—with potentially disastrous consequences.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I just finished this book. It took me about a month to go through it and critique it. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Please do not be mistaken. The book has flaws and I disagree with much of what it claims, but it is simply brilliant. I do a lot of reading in philosophy and this is a truly remarkable book. IMO, only two thinkers in the last 200 years are comparable to Iain, I think Iain is superior to both.The first is Hegel who wrote the early 1800’s. Hegel wrote two major works (The Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic). While I detest Hegel, he is clearly the most influential thinker in our present culture. Marx is derived from Hegel as are the Post-Moderns and all forms of Critical Theory (Marcuse, Black Lives Matters, Critical Race Theory, et.al.). Iain, by the way, loves Hegel (it is one of the points I think he got wrong!). This book is divided into two Parts. Part 1 sets out the structure of Iain’s thought, just as the Science of Logic sets out Hegel’s. And, Iain’s Part 1 is much easier to read than Hegel’s Science of Logic. Iain’s Part 2 applies his thought to history; he uses his thought to explain the development of human thought in the West from the ancient Greeks to Post-Modernism. Hegel did the same with his Phenomenology (of course, Hegel stopped his historical analysis much earlier). Once again Iain is much easier to read than Hegel. And, his work, IMO, is superior to Hegel both in content and in presentation. Not only is Iain much easier to read, he presents his thought in the proper order – structure first and then the application of the structure to history. Hegel did it backwards – he applied his structure to history first in the Phenomenology and then explained his structure in his Logic.The second thinker is Charles Darwin. Darwin build an intellectual structure which introduced a new concept into Science. This concept is called “natural selection”, which asserts that species are changed as they adapt to different environments. This makes logical sense (after all, as Darwin pointed out, mankind is modifying species all the time – inventing new breeds of dogs and new types of flowers). At this level, Darwin’s theory applies only to intra-species adaption, is falsifiable (which Karl Popper correctly IMO established as the hallmark for scientific theories), and was a huge scientific advance. Darwin then conflated his innovative and brilliant scientific theory of intra-species adaption into the “mythos” we know as “Darwinian Creationism”. Darwinian Creationism is totally distinct from his intra-species natural selection theory. In traditional philosophical terms, Darwinian intra-species adaption is a “logos” and Dawinian Creationism is a “mythos” Darwinian Creationism claims to explain how all carbon based life on this planet came into existence. It is not falsifiable in the scientific sense (though many (erroneously IMO) claim it is). And it has been severely criticized. A excellent example is Thomas Nagel, who both is an atheist and holds PhD in Philosophy and is the head of the NYU philosophy department who asserts (once again correctly IMO) that Darwinian Creationism (the mythos), not Darwinian intra-species natural selection (the logos) simply cannot be true. But, whatever one thinks of Darwin, he is one of the few thinkers outside of Aristotle, who actually created two distinct and complementary systems of thought that have both been extraordinarily influential.Like Darwin, Iain has built a scientific theory (based on cognitive science) which explains how the operation of human cognition as a relationship between the two brain hemispheres. This is very much a “logos”, just like Darwin created. Just like Darwin, Iain has taken his “logos” and created another far more extensive intellectual structure – one which explains and evaluates how this dual hemispheric structure has impacted human history starting with the ancient Greeks and ending with the post-moderns. This is not a “mythos”. It is rather a comprehensive philosophical evaluation “model” – a way of evaluating certain historical periods and systems of thought. For example, Iain evaluates Descartes as compared to Heidegger. Comprehensive evaluation “models” are very rare in the history of human thought. For example, the last comprehensive philosophical evaluation “models” prior to Iain were proposed by David Hume in the early 1700’s followed by Hegel in the early 1800’s.Finally, Iain is the first true successor to the great Scottish thinker Thomas Reid (1710 -1796). Reid work was incredibly influential in Great Britain (from about 1750 to about 1820) and in America (from about 1760 to about 1900). In fact, Reid was extremely influential in the founding of America. Robert Curry has recently written two books on the subject. For a variety of reasons, Thomas Reid simply disappeared from the world for thought for nearly a century, but is now being “rediscovered”. For example, Nicholas Wolterstorff (a philosophy professor at Yale) has written and excellent book on Reid, comparing his work to that of Ludwig Wittgenstein.Part of the reason Reid “disappeared” is that he had no worthy successor, until Iain. In fact, Reid was one of the first post-Newtonian cognitive scientists. His contemporary cognitive scientist, who had a drastically different take on the subject, is the better know Scotsman David Hume. Iain does cognitive science in the style of Reid and provides the first positive advancement on that discipline in line with the approach of Thomas Reid and based on the same metaphysical point of view. It was quite exciting for me to encounter it. I can hardly wait to read Iain’s second work released in 2021.Finally, if you have read or been impressed by the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et. al.), this book is a must read. Just as Thomas Reid wrote to counter David Hume (and did so with incredible success in Great Britain and the United States), Iain writes to counter the New Atheists (particularly Dawkins). In fact, the relationship between Iain’s work that of Richard Dawkins bears a striking resemblance to the relationship between Thomas Reid’s work and that of David Hume. Just as Thomas Reid was a theistic counter (based on science) to Hume atheism, Iain is a theistic counter (based on science) to Dawkins’ atheism.Although flawed, it is a remarkable accomplishment and I highly recommend it.

⭐This is a ground breaking and shattering book. (Superlatively true of the first half, but the second half is not ground breaking or shattering.)I am assuming McGilchrist knows what he is talking about and is not giving us a skewed presentation of the material he goes over. If I can count on that, then the material he goes over is astonishing. Most professional reviews are positive.There are volumes of evidentiary material in the social sciences and especially linguistic philosophy that deserve a second look in light of this book. The author points to some of these, but all kinds of scholars in the subtle arts will see things pertinent to their own fields not touched on in the book. Take note, fine arts specialists and people with a bent for aesthetics.One that is dear and near to me is Wittgenstein’s rendering of the meaning of language as tied up with its use. I’ve held to these understandings for decades, and a lot of my published social theory draws from it. However, now it appears that you can be fully competent at linguistic use (knowing how to get through a conversation and so on) but find the whole idea of it meaning anything baffling OR (depending on which side of the brain has been temporarily turned off) you can perfectly understand meaning and know desperately what you want to say but be frustrated into anxiety by the fact that you don’t know how to use language, you don’t know any words, you don’t know grammar and so on. I imagine the latter to be like a “senior moment” when you’re struggling for a familiar word that escapes you for the moment, only here it’s the whole language that escapes you. You can “feel” it but be unable to say anything. It’s even odder to imagine being able to hear what other people are talking about in its course without knowing a single word.At the very least, this is challenging to Wittgenstein scholars, and there are many others. (McGilchrist gives an informed and sympathetic reading to major phenomenologists who, he says, were struggling to say why what they were trying to say cannot be said in language but trying to say it in language anyway, a despair-inducing exercise. McGilchrist allows that he also is trapped in that loop of self-defeat, but now he has the evidence.) And while Wittgenstein’s use-meaning seems to take a hit, that same hit brings new profundity to “Whereof which we cannot speak, we thereof must remain silent.” So at least Wittgenstein comes out clean!Once your Gestalt has been rocked in part one of this book, however, part two will be disappointing if you know much about historical shifts toward, and away from, subjectively experienced modes of rationality. You may realize that in light of part one you will be able to predict what you’ll read in part two relevant to the topics listed. It’s pretty obvious. But for over a hundred years there have been better renditions of these historical trends than McGilchrist offers here; what he adds is the Brain. What’s shifting here is what kinds of ideational modes we respect more than others. If we respect rationality over intuition (think of all the routines that get “behaviorized” in policy statements at your average American university so that they can be applied “disinterestedly”), this isn’t because our brains are changing…even if brain changes can be registered. (Computer games change our brains, but that change didn’t cause computer games.) McGilchrist doesn’t exactly say it’s all happening because of our changing brains, but he does couch it in terms of one side of the braining winning some sort of natural battle with the other side (a battle that is convincing in part one). He doesn’t quite come out and say that the victory of bureaucracy and rationality over tradition and sentiment occurs in the brain or that brain-change is an autonomous causal variable where one side just happens to win out over the other, and he is aware of cultural and historical forces at work. But treating the astonishing findings presented in part one as a template for all of these other matters is, I believe, unwarranted. We have enough to handle from part one alone.

⭐The first few chapters give a very nice overview of left/right-hemisphere asymmetry, mainly from lesion studies and fMRI experiments. I learnt several new things and if the book had stopped here i would have given it five star.Unfortunately it then tries to explain a large part of human behaviour and western culture based on this view of brain lateralisation. The arguments are now no longer based on experiments, but on introspection, philosophy, literature, and a fair bit of handwaving that failed to convince me. The introduction ridicules pop science accounts calling the left hemisphere male and the right female etc, but a few hundred pages later this book happily compares right/left to dionysian/apollonian in Nietzche’s sense, and explains perspective in paintings based on brain function.Clinical examples such as left handedness, autism, schizophrenia are simplified and tweaked to fit the theory. The focus on lateralisation tends to underestimate the importance of other separations in the brain (frontal/posterior, midbrain/cortical etc).In the end, this felt like a very left hemisphere book that tried to fit too much into one unifying theory, falling into the same trap as previous books in the genre. My right hemisphere would have preferred a book much shorter, and in verse.

⭐I was made aware of Dr McGilchrist and his work when I saw him in the first interview he did with Professor Jordan Peterson. His thesis–that the two hemispheres of the brain see the world in very different ways–fascinated me.This is a large book and a substantial read, as befits his subject. Fortunately, it proves the maxim that a man who is expert in his subject is the best one to turn to for an explanation.In the first part, Dr McGilchrist tells us about the scientific studies, and medical case studies, which inform his hypothesis. In the second part, his focus is more cultural. He explains that in some periods of Western cutural history, the gifts of the left hemisphere’s way of viewing the world, have been emphasied. This was the case the eighteenth century (the “Age of Reason”), and arguable today also. In other periods, the unique take on reality provided by the right hemisphere of the brain has been given full play in cultural life. Dr McGilchrist cites the 17th century, and the later Romantic Era, as examples.The conclusion I found particularly interesting. In his conclusion, Dr McGilchrist compares Far Eastern with Western modes of thought, and how that plays out in the two cultures.This is a book to read at an unhurried pace. Possibly, too, one should plan on reading it more than once, with a suitable interval between readings.One tip: If you plan on reading this book, before you do so, look up Dr McGilchrist on YouTube. You will find him there doing interviews, and presentations. He explains the basic points of his hypothesis very clearly and well.

⭐This book, although heavy going and highly technical in places, is an essential to anyone who wants to know why we seem to be losing our renowned British sense of humour, our tolerance and our ability to allow proper freedom of speech. Why, for example, was a fairly unremarkable comment by J K Rowling about the absurdity of calling women ‘persons who menstruate’ seized on and torn to shreds by the outraged Twitterati? It’s the workings of the brain, folks, and people’s brains are changing. Professor McGilchrist has the explanation at his fingertips. I’d better point out that the J K Rowling affair isn’t mentioned in the book, but having read this book, I realised why she got such rough treatment online. As I say above, technical, demanding, the sort of book that will get you through the latest lockdown, and you’ll come out of this read knowing a few things you never knew before.

⭐“Time is running out,” writes Iain McGilchrist, “and the way we think, which got us into this mess, will not be enough to get us out of it.”. As the philosopher, linguist and poet Jean Gebser stated, we are now in the late-stage [left-brain], deficient mode of the mental-rational structure of consciousness, and there is no guarantee that we’ll successfully evolve to the next predicted stage, that of the integral – for as McGilchrist sees, our remaining escape routes to a more right-hemisphere, or balanced and holistic mode of being, are now in the process of being closed off.The Master and His Emissary is a deeply-researched yet expansive, seminal masterpiece – vitally relevant and necessary in these modern, post-modern and post-truth times in the West.

⭐I will have to read this book twice, it is very dense.There is something deeply wrong with the west, I believe most of us feel the truth of this.How can things have gone so wrong ,all over , and at the same time ?This book gives us much to consider, I agree that the micro- management that goes on since 20 years ago has taken over from the real purpose of doing things.The alogorithim has now taken precedence and we will suffer for it.This book attempts to explain what our mental state has morphed into and how that is affecting our civilisation.The future looks very bleak..

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