The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World Hardcover
Author: Visit Amazon's Iain McGilchrist Page - ISBN: 030014878X - Language: English - Format: PDF, EPUB
DESCRIPTION
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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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
"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
"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
"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
"Absolutely fascinating."--Jessa Crispin, Editor of 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
‘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
“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
DETAILS
- Hardcover: 608 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press (December 15, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 030014878X
- ISBN-13: 978-0300148787
- Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 2.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #995,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
REVIEWS
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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!
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