In his study of how the two hemispheres communicate, Iain McGilchrist shows us the world in an entirely new way
The cover material of The Matter with Things includes a large statement by an Oxford professor: “this is one of the most important books ever published. And, yes, I do mean ever”. Can any contemporary book justify such praise – or even withstand it? Despite this immoderate encomium, no “intelligent general reader” (the book’s target audience) should be discouraged; for Iain McGilchrist is a serious man: a Fellow of All Souls, eminent in literary criticism, neurology and psychiatry, a thinker and (impossible to avoid the term) sage. His previous book, The Master and his Emissary, sold 125,000 copies and was adulated by public figures from Rowan Williams to Philip Pullman; some consider him the most important non-fiction writer of the age.
Such success is unusual for a book dealing with the narrow subject of our divided brain; but the neglected science of hemisphere difference, returned centre-stage by McGilchrist, provides the key to far larger issues. Moreover, it emerges that his earlier book, substantial as it was, constituted but a preparation for The Matter with Things. Hitherto largely unreviewed, undeniably lengthy and expensive, the latter’s first print-run has nevertheless already sold out; a second will be available by the end of this month. Those who have taken the plunge become completely immersed in these two handsomely-produced and highly readable volumes, containing the central corpus of his thought.
Western civilisation is in a deep predicament, exemplified by alienation within society, the atrophy of value, the sterility of contemporary art, the increasing dominance of mechanical and bureaucratised thinking, the triumph of procedure over substance, and environmental despoliation. McGilchrist argues that these conditions have a common basis, to identify which may help to understand our condition and perhaps to improve it. But the essential purpose of his new book is epistemological, enabling us to know the existential state in which we live.
The world exists** for us inasmuch as we perceive it. We perceive it through our embodiment as human beings and in particular through our minds. But the incontrovertible evidence shows that our divided brains offer two completely different ways of experiencing the world. The left hemisphere analyses parts; the right synthesizes the whole – the Gestalt. The left constructs a map; the right perceives the landscape. In a healthy brain, both hemispheres constantly engage and inter-communicate. However, an imbalance has developed: many aspects of language engage the left hemisphere, and our overwhelmingly verbalised modern existence promotes left-hemispherical dominance. Countless clinical studies demonstrate that in many areas the left hemisphere is obtuse, over-confident, inclined to confabulation, and often wrong. The right hemisphere, once misnamed the silent hemisphere, is far better at understanding the world, whereas the left seeks to manipulate it. We exist increasingly in a hall of mirrors where our self-validating left-brain modes of thought continually push us in the wrong direction.
The novelty and ambition of The Matter with Things is to take the hemisphere hypothesis and through its lens to conduct a detailed examination of truth. McGilchrist identifies the paths by which we might reach truth: science, reason, intuition and imagination. A professional scientist and therefore a believer in the power of reason properly understood, he shows that both approaches are abused by left-hemisphere thinking. The results of hyper-rationalism are often absurd: philosophers who deny the existence of consciousness (with what faculty?) or geneticists who persist in arguing (in Darwin’s name but contrary to his own intuitions) a machine theory of evolution. (That old mastodon Richard Dawkins’ ‘selfish gene’ model is shown to be hopelessly out-of-date.)
Even this undertaking is not the book’s central concern, for in its second volume McGilchrist turns to examine yet larger questions: the truth about time, space and matter, flow and movement, consciousness, purpose and, as a tremendous capstone, our sense of the sacred. These are areas where we cannot confine ourselves to left-hemisphere techniques of analysis, because to analyse something is to reduce it to parts, or to compare it with something else, whereas these topics are sui generis, and cannot meaningfully be broken down. (Zeno’s paradoxes expose the nonsense of atomising time, and Achilles never catches the tortoise). Instead, he invites us to see the world synthetically, recognising the superiority in understanding of the right hemisphere. It is a world not composed of static objects, but of dynamic processes and relationships; a world not separated from and dispassionately observed by us, but one that through us comes into being.
McGilchrist’s central claim is to offer an account which is “at last, true to experience, to science and to philosophy”. Therange is phenomenal, the erudition astounding (the bibliography alone runs to 180 pages). Even if one used it for no other purpose, his book is a treasure-store of quotations; a polymath, he has read and seems to remember everything. He stands upon the shoulders of the giants whose works he amply quotes. His heroes include Heraclitus (not Plato), Pascal (definitely not Descartes), Wordsworth, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, William James and Bergson. He draws out the implications of the mysteries of quantum physics; dismissing the multiverse “solution” as no better than naïve deism, he discerns an intrinsic ever-unfolding mystery and purpose in the cosmos and, while rejecting the propositional tenets of organised religion, he ends up on the side of God (for want of a better verb [sic]), meanwhile giving the reductionist atheist position the most thorough (and deserved) kicking that it has ever received.
Yet there is nothing shrill or tendentious about this book. McGilchrist writes immaculately and with poetic sensibility. The tone is courteous (except in the face of others’ intolerance), gentle, above all wise. Those who do not normally read about science or philosophy will never do so in better company. Like the bible in a Victorian drawing-room, this is a book that you should keep permanently open, for the Oxford prof has a point: after reading The Matter with Things, you will never see the world in the same way again.