The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World »

Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where he taught literature before training in medicine. He was Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital, London, and has researched in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He now works privately in London and otherwise lives on the Isle of Skye.

Why is the brain divided? The difference between right and left hemispheres has been puzzled over for centuries. In a book of unprecedented scope, Iain McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent brain research, illustrated with case histories, to reveal that the difference is profound—not just this or that function, but two whole, coherent, but incompatible ways of experiencing the world. The left hemisphere is detail oriented, prefers mechanisms to living things, and is inclined to self-interest, where the right hemisphere has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity. This division helps explain the origins of music and language, and casts new light on the history of philosophy, as well as on some mental illnesses.

In the second part of the book, McGilchrist takes the reader on a journey through the history of Western culture, illustrating the tension between these two worlds as revealed in the thought and belief of thinkers and artists, from Aeschylus to Magritte. He argues that, despite its inferior grasp of reality, the left hemisphere is increasingly taking precedence in the modern world, with potentially disastrous consequences. This is truly a tour de force that should excite interest in a wide readership.

Publishers Weekly

A U.K. mental health consultant and clinical director with a background in literature, McGilchrist attempts to synthesize his two areas of expertise, arguing that the "divided and asymmetrical nature" of the human brain is reflected in the history of Western culture. Part I, The Divided Brain, lays the groundwork for his thesis, examining two lobes' significantly different features (structure, sensitivity to hormones, etc.) and separate functions (the left hemisphere is concerned with "what," the right with "how"). He suggests that music, "ultimately... the communication of emotion," is the "ancestor of language," arising largely in the right hemisphere while "the culture of the written word tends inevitably toward the predominantly left hemisphere." More controversially, McGilchrist argues that "there is no such thing as the brain" as such, only the brain as we perceive it; this leads him to conclude that different periods of Western civilization (from the Homeric epoch to the present), one or the other hemisphere has predominated, defining "consistent ways of being that persist" through time. This densely argued book is aimed at an academic crowd, is notable for its sweep but a stretch in terms of a uniting thesis.
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List of Illustrations

Introduction The Master and His Emissary 1

Pt. 1 The Divided Brain 15

Ch. 1 Asymmetry and the Brain 16

Ch. 2 What do the Two Hemispheres 'Do'? 32

Ch. 3 Language, Truth and Music 94

Ch. 4 The Nature of the Two Worlds 133

Ch. 5 The Primacy of the Right Hemisphere 176

Ch. 6 The Triumph of the Left Hemisphere 209

Pt. 2 How the Brain Has Shaped Our World 239

Ch. 7 Imitation and the Evolution of Culture 240

Ch. 8 The Ancient World 257

Ch. 9 The Renaissance and the Reformation 298

Ch. 10 The Enlightenment 330

Ch. 11 Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution 352

Ch. 12 The Modern and Post-Modern Worlds 389

Conclusion: The Master Betrayed 428

Notes 463

Bibliography 518

Index 586