The Best Book I Ever Read: The Master and His Emissary

There are most definitely two “realities” to our experience. They seem to be influenced by hemispheric differentiation, but if they are not, their ontological status is impossible to ignore nevertheless, regardless of its neuroanatomic origin.

What the title is alluding to is that the right hemisphere is the master, while the left hemisphere is his emissary. And when the emissary overestimates his role and tries to overtake the master, things don’t go well.

Most importantly, while the left hemisphere has traditionally been considered the main hemisphere (mostly because it’s associated with language), he argues that the right hemisphere is in the fact the most important.

There are most definitely differences across the two brain hemispheres; they just aren’t as simplistic as the examples first mentioned. Generally speaking, the difference isn’t on “what” is done, but “how” is done. The left hemisphere deals with units, the right with aggregates. The left hemisphere is focused, and engaged with a goal in mind. The r... See more

The biggest thing I got out of the book was how there is much more to reality than what we can rationally apprehend and how our view of the world is filtered and pre-interpreted without us even knowing it.

He argues that not only do we have two different modes of interpreting the world, but that these modes can be emphasized, and they can be influenced and influence culture itself, which produces massive cultural shifts in human societies. He begins with Greece in the 6th century BC Athens, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, Romanti... See more

almost all cognition involves starting at the right hemisphere, then going to the left, and back to the right.