You are not your brain you are a living human being’ (p.
These and similar formulations should be understood as avoiding the repetition of such cumbersome locutions as “a person relying on the faculties of the left (or right) hemisphere believes (intends, decides, likes)”, etc. In the Introduction, he clarifies this: ‘I am aware that a hemisphere on its own cannot properly be said to do what only a person can do: “believe”, “intend”, “decide”, “like” and so on. His use of language here can seem strange because he writes of the two hemispheres as if they are things with agency. It is, therefore, he argues, ‘a more important guide and a more reliable one to the nature of reality’ (p. The right hemisphere, by contrast, is characterised by ‘paying open, sustained, vigilant attention to the world, in order to understand and relate to the bigger picture’ (p. It is also the hemisphere ‘devoted to re-presentation’ (p.105), hence our attachment to maps and models of reality. McGilchrist’s thesis is that the left hemisphere has come to dominate in our society he maintains for instance that ‘the left hemisphere being used largely for paying narrow-beam, sharply focussed attention to the world, for the purpose of manipulation’ (p. For example, ‘from the left hemisphere’s point of view, imagination is a species of lying, from the right hemisphere’s point of view, it is necessary for access to the truth’ (p. As in his previous and widely acclaimed book, The Master and his Emissary (Yale University Press, 2009), he demonstrates how the two halves perform in distinct though complementary ways. The prism through which McGilchrist explains his ideas is that of the difference between the two sides of the brain. Why should this be? The generally accepted view of the functions associated with the two sides of the brain. So we live ever more in a virtual world, not the real one. However, we not only treat them as if they faithfully represent the territory, ‘the map, displaces the terrain that is mapped, and is taken for the reality…’ (p. They are maps, useful maps, but nevertheless just maps. Scientific theories expressed in mathematical form, economic models, photographs – all re-present the reality they purport to describe. One of McGilchrist’s central points is that our society is one in which we rely on representations of the world as our way of knowing it. His core argument is that we need to move from an understanding based upon the reality of matter to one based on process and flow: ‘the assumption of a materialist world composed of “things” is the greatest impediment we face’ (p.
It is Iain McGilchrist’s magnum opus, the product of ten years’ work and the culmination of his varied careers as a neuroscientist, literary scholar, philosopher and psychiatrist. Richard Gault reviews The Matter with Things, published by Perspectiva Press in 2021.
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