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
One way of looking at the difference would be to say that while the left hemisphere's raison d'être is to narrow things down to a certainty, the right hemisphere's is to open them up into possibility. In life we need both. In fact for practical purposes, narrowing things down to a certainty, so that we can grasp them, is more helpful. But it is als
... See moreIain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
certainty as an useful illusion
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Even on Unherd there is a herd and I am always concerned when I find myself outside of it... but unlike most of the comments here, I actually did not find this to be an enlightening or insightful interview.
On the contrary, Dr. McGilchrist’s comments seem to me to be too vague and abstracted to mean much, irrefutable in their ... See more
1 year ago
Even on Unherd there is a herd and I am always concerned when I find myself outside of it... but unlike most of the comments here, I actually did not find this to be an enlightening or insightful interview.
On the contrary, Dr. McGilchrist’s comments seem to me to be too vague and abstracted to mean much, irrefutable in their ... See more
Iain McGilchrist • Left-brain thinking will destroy civilisation
comments section
The right hemisphere, the so-called minor hemisphere, is in fact the one that knows, and more importantly the one that understands, more.
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
... See moreIain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
The left hemisphere world is characterised by what is familiar and fully expressible in language; the right hemisphere is more open to and attentive towards whatever is ‘other’, and can be only indirectly expressed. The left hemisphere is less capable of Keats’s ‘negative capability’ – ‘being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritab... See more
Iain McGilchrist • Moving on
I am just as sceptical of the naïve idealist view, espoused by some post-modernists, that reality is all in our heads – we make it all up. For one thing there would be no point in my writing this, since you don't exist to read it. I take it that we bring about a world in consciousness that is partly what is given, and partly what we bring, somethin
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attention is the key
Because the left hemisphere is concerned with power, its narrative is always about power. You will notice this all around you nowadays.
Iain McGilchrist • Moving on
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,
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The soul and the body have been designed to be a functioning team, much the way the conscious and subconscious mind function together. The body knows our oneness with everything because it feels it. The awakened heart longs to explore others, to nurture others, to experience our oneness with others, and this offers a clue to the truths that the hea
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