divided brain
It would be crazy to suppose that our brains were so perfectly constructed that they could understand and make us aware of everything in the universe.
from The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning by Iain McGilchrist
divided brain
It sees that our understanding has to be participatory , and that the soul and body are not opposed but discernibly different aspects of one reality. It is better at holding together apparently conflicting positions – whereas according to the left hemisphere, nothing can be separate and connected, precisely measurable and intrinsically imprecise, i... See more
Iain McGilchrist • Moving on
McGilchrist notes:
Only the right hemisphere has a whole body image; the left hemisphere sees the body as an assemblage of parts, and as if it were an object in space alongside other objects, rather than a mode of existence. ...For the right hemisphere, we live the body; whereas for the left, we live in it, rather as we drive a car.
River Kenna • Solving McGilchrist's Big Problem (or, fix right hemisphere imbalance with these 7 weird tricks?)
As Pascal wrote, ‘The ultimate achievement of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it. It is indeed feeble if it can't get as far as understanding that.’
Iain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
This has the profoundest consequences for the way it sees the world, when contrasted with the take of the right hemisphere, which sees things as a whole, never as isolated particles independent of a context.
Iain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
The left hemisphere is not in touch with the world. It is demonstrably self-deceiving, and confabulates – makes up a story, when it cannot understand something, and tells it with conviction. Michael Gazzaniga first demonstrated this in split-brain patients. Subsequent research shows that, unlike the right hemisphere, which tends toward self-doubt,
... See moreIain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
"Mind" is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can’t see your own back (without mirrors).“
Robert Anton Wilson • Prometheus Rising
Only the left hemisphere encodes tools and machines – you will remember that the purpose of the left hemisphere is to allow us to manipulate the world, not to understand it.
Iain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
Some elegant research into gesture and speech reveals that thought begins and ends in the right hemisphere, passing through the necessary staging post of the left hemisphere, where it is put into serial sentences. This follows a typical pattern in the way the hemispheres relate: the origins and the end lie in the right hemisphere's world, but it is
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