The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World Paperback – October 9, 2012

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.

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. It is efficient in routine situations where things are predictable. Without benefit of the RH (seen in studies of people with hemispheric damage, for example), it also renders things inert, mechanical and lifeless.. But it allows us to "know" and learn and make things.The right hemisphere's emphasis is on process, on the "how", "the manner in which" or the "howness" as McGilchrist puts it. It is interested in "ways of being" which only living things have. I was amazed to learn that the RH does recognize one group of inanimate objects as belonging to the class of living entities, and that is musical instruments (!) It helps us resonate with other living beings and the natural world, seeing its ultimate interconnectedness. The RH can carefully see things out of their context, it is global rather than regional, is broad and flexible, and as mentioned above, understands metaphor. It sees the gestalt and the wholeness; it tolerates ambiguity and the unknown. Its structure metaphor is "horizontal"; it is spacious and helps us with enough distance so we can observe. In it, we experience the live, complex, embodied, world of individual, always unique beings, forever in flux, a net of interdependencies, forming and reforming wholes, a world with which we are deeply connected. The RH is responsible for every kind of attention: divided, vigilant, sustained, and alertness - except for "focused", the domain of the LH. It can direct attention to what comes to us "from the edges" of our awareness regardless of the hemisphere side. It alone detects new or novel experiences. It distinguishes old information from new better than the LH. Animals, like horses, perceive new and emotionally arousing stimuli with the left eye (which is governed by the RH). It is more capable of a frame shift; think "possibility"; it has flexibility when encountering the "new" and suppresses the immediate impulse to see it as "old". It actively watches for discrepancies, more like a "devil's advocate". It approaches certainty with caution and humility. It says "I wonder" or "it might be" when confronted with information. But it also, without the LH, would create an experience that was always unique, forever in motion and unpredictable. `'If all things flow, and there is never a repeated experience, then we can never step into the same river twice, and we would never be able to `know' anything." If nothing can ever be repeated, then nothing can be known.Is the result of this growing LH dominance over the RH an increasingly dehumanized society where mechanism, bureaucracy, obsession with structure and with "what" predominates over a concern for living things and beings and their interconnectedness? You will be immersed in this question throughout this remarkable book.While no doubt this book deepens our understanding of the brain and has vast implications for psychotherapy and the understanding of human psychology, it is far more than this. It isn't possible to read this book without a continuing awareness of our political system, the growing dominance of our corporations, the weak assumptions of war, and the uncomfortably growing sense of the "dehumanization" of our world.

O trabalho apresentado pelo doutor Mcgilchrist é simplesmente impressionante. Escrito em linguagem clara e direta, ele explica conceitos um tanto complexos com muita maestria. Infelizmente, esta importante obra não possui uma tradução para o Português do Brasil, considerando que este livro foi publicado em 2009!

it took me a while to enter it, but i do not regret. I decided to buy it after watching many interviews online of the author.

A tour-de-force, peerless in its breadth and depth of multi-disciplinary analysis of the divided nature of the brain, and the increasing cerebral lateralization in the history of ideas. (The devastating consequences of disproportionate left hemisphere dominance). McGilchrist masterfully cross-fertilizes both domains, the sciences and humanities - the disciplines of psychiatry, cognitive and neuroscience, anthropology, with philosophy of mind, literature, music, language and art, - again with unsurpassed breadth, depth and sophistication, – truly staggering.In the latter part, he takes you on a tremendous journey through pivotal periods in Western civilization, explicating the ramifications of hemispheric balance with periods of flourishing (eg: early Greek, Romantic zenith and Renaissance) and the disastrous effects when the left hemisphere takes on more than its due share, leading to overextending of empires and collapse. Left hemispheric dominance results in confining our attention to and conception of the world to a reductive, bloodless, mechanistic, bureaucratized, compartmentalized, devitalized view of the world as an aggregate of separate 'things', as opposed to a living, flowing, ongoing constellation of intrinsically interconnected processes and events in constant dialog with one another).This work is truly magisterial, and shows compellingly how we've arrived to where we are today.The documentary The Divided Brain (on which he consulted), makes for a great primer.McGilchrist is easily one of the most important thinkers to draw breath and his work elucidates a message and awareness crucial for the survival and flourishing of our species.

One of the most interesting and informative books this century.I would highly recommend listening to the audible version a few times before reading the book.The book covers many different subjects from many different angles; drawing on fields of knowledge which are often jealously policed by academic specialists.It’s a literary, scientific, and philosophical tour de force which gives many plausible explanations for the disastrous mess in which we find ourselves.McGilchrist mentions that the topics of each chapter are so vast that lifetimes of study and research would be needed to cover them; and this, for me, is the root of the problem. Thinking and studying in the way we do – in a predominantly left hemispheric manner in a predominantly left hemispherically organized culture – we can never hope to learn much in a lifetime or evolve; we can however, in our little detached spheres of ‘learning’ do a huge amount of damage to ourselves and our planet. In brief, there has to be another way of learning and living. But first, as McGilchrist points out, we should perhaps observe that overdriving the left hemisphere for centuries has created a hypertrophy of focus; we are hypnotised, in a deep trance state; as mystics rightly claim, we are asleep. The difficulty is that a sleeping ‘civilization’ has to realize that it is asleep. This book is a constructive way of beginning to understand what’s wrong and to begin to twitch a little in our own sleep.It’s interesting that the left hemisphere as described by McGilchrist, has many of the functions and attributes of the self which Idries Shah describes as the ‘Commanding Self’ in his book ‘The Sufis’ (greed, laziness, selfishness, envy etc). This ‘Commanding Self’ is a secondary self, common to all of us, which highjacks the real self. If we don’t observe it and control it, it will control us; it will become what we assume ourselves to be. It’s interesting because, as with McGilchrist’s emissary, the Commanding Self is a usurper. When this self is on the throne (or McGilchrist’s ‘Emissary’) we are upside down in relation to reality. As another Sufi, Hakim Sanai mentioned: ‘If you yourself are upside down in relation to reality, then your wisdom and faith are bound to be topsy turvy.’ In the following verse Sanai writes, ‘Stop weaving a net about yourself. Burst like a lion from the cage.’ Hopefully, understanding McGilchrist’s ‘Emissary’ brings us a little closer to understanding the cage maker; and the designs of our cages.

No pude esperar a la traducción. Sorprende lo entretenido y fácil de su lectura. Adentrarse en la estructura del cerebro es adentrase en uno mismo y en la historia. Esto, más que una metáfora creíble, es una sensiblemente cambia-vidas. Fascinante y revelador contenido.