You will never see the world in the same way again

Review of The Matter With Things by Jonathan Gaisman

The dust jacket of The Matter With Things quotes a large statement from an Oxford professor: ‘This is one of the most important books ever published. And yes, I do mean ever.’ Can any contemporary work withstand such praise?

The ‘intelligent general reader’ (the book’s target audience) should, however, not be discouraged, for Iain McGilchrist has to be taken seriously: a Fellow of All Souls, eminent in neurology, psychiatry and literary criticism, a thinker and — it’s impossible to avoid the term — a sage.

His previous book, The Master and His Emissary, was admired by public figures from Rowan Williams to Philip Pullman. Some consider McGilchrist the most important non-fiction writer of our time.

Such enthusiasm is unusual for the narrow subject of our divided brains. The neglected science of hemisphere difference, returned to centre stage by McGilchrist, provides the key to many large issues difficult to address with lesser tools.

The earlier work, substantial as it is, seems to have been a preparation for The Matter With Things, whose two handsomely produced volumes contain the entire corpus of McGilchrist’s thought. Initially unreviewed, and undeniably long and expensive, its first print run nonetheless sold out quickly, and readers reported becoming completely immersed. It is now once more available.

Western civilization [extreme capitalism] is in a predicament exemplified by:

- alienation,

- environmental despoliation,

- the atrophy of truly human values,

- the sterility [commercialization] of contemporary art,

- the increasing prevalence of rectilinear, bureaucratised thinking; and

- the triumph of [technocratic] procedure over substance [improvements to the lives of the 99% living on SpaceShip Earth].

The Matter With Things has too aims. Its lesser is to identify the common basis of those conditions, to understand and perhaps improve them. Its greater purpose is to enable us to perceive the world we inhabit [more fully and less one-sidedly].

Our world exists for each of us only inasmuch as we can and prefer to perceive it. We do so as embodied human beings, in particular through our [multiple intelligences]. Clinical evidence shows our divided brains offer two completely different ways of experiencing the world, one likes to work with only the details; one prefers to work with only the whole and with flow between and around all details].

The left hemisphere prefers analyse only lifeless parts[ indeed, it prefers to believe only these parts are real].

The right enjoys synthesizing the whole, the living Gestalt of what it perceives. The right perceives the landscape around us [with five or more senses].

The left [feels overwhelmed with so much data. It] constructs a more limited artificial map [for its uses].

The right encounters the new, is the hemisphere of music, poetry, humor and irony.

The left is comfortable only with categories, labels, the literal and the familiar.

The two hemispheres constantly intercommunicate. However, since many aspects of language preferentially engage the left hemisphere, our modern, over-verbalized existence, promotes left-brain dominance.

[Tho it dominates mainstream Western capitalist-consumer culture] countless studies demonstrate how in many areas, the left hemisphere is obtuse, overconfident, fantastical and wrong.

The right hemisphere, once misnamed the silent hemisphere, is better at understanding the world [as a whole]. The left is only happy when it can manipulate the world and its pieces.

[The echo-chamber of] self-validating left-brain modes of thought, continually push us in the wrong direction, into a confusing hall of mirrors, in which we now exist [without the perspective of the whole with which to divine true priorities or healthy directions to evolve. For left brain, novelty alone is sufficient “evolution”].

The ambition of The Matter With Things is to take [brain lateralization research and] hypothesis; and, through its lens, conduct a detailed examination of [our many one-sided conceivings of] truth.

McGilchrist discusses the [conventional, left-brain-only] paths leading to truth: science and reason; how, both are easily corrupted by left-hemisphere-only thinking.

The [primitive, immature] results of hyper-rationalism are often indefensible: philosophers who deny the existence of consciousness (with what faculty?); or, geneticists who persist in arguing (in Darwin’s name but contrary to his intuitions) a mechanistic ‘selfish gene’ theory of evolution. [These left-brain theories shield left-brain from the rigorous honesty and humility, required NOW, to undo the harm one-sided science and reason have inflicted on us all.]

Even this [gigantic] undertaking is not the book’s central concern. McGilchrist then examines even deeper questions: the truth about time, flow and movement, space and matter, consciousness, purpose; and as a tremendous capstone, our sense of the sacred.

These are areas where we cannot confine ourselves to only left-hemisphere analysis. To analyse something is to reduce it to parts, whereas these topics are sui generis and cannot be separated or broken down.

McGilchrist invites us to see the world ]thru a rhythmic, alternating synthesis of intelligences from each hemisphere of our brain]. Let’s recognize the necessity of the left hemisphere; and, the superiority of the right [in terms of appreciation, harmony and peace for the highest good of all concerned].

[When both sides of the brain work together as teammates] the world is revealed as composed not of static objects (the ‘Things’ of the book’s title), but of dynamic processes and relationships. We live in a world not separated from and dispassionately observed by us. We live in a world which only through us comes into balance and harmony. As Yeats says, the dancer and the dance become one.

McGilchrist gives an account ‘true to both experience, to science and to philosophy’. The range and erudition are 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 words he amply cites. His forebears include Heraclitus (not Plato), Pascal (definitely not Descartes), Goethe, Wordsworth, Schelling, Hegel, Heidegger, William James, Whitehead and Bergson.

Drawing out the implications of quantum physics, he discerns an ever-unfolding pattern and purpose in the cosmos and, while rejecting the propositions of traditional organized religion, he ends up on the side of God (for want of a better verb); at the same time, giving the reductive atheist position a formidable kicking.

Yet there is nothing wacky or tendentious about this book. McGilchrist writes readably and with poetic sensibility. The tone is courteous (except in the face of others’ intolerance), modest and 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 it you will never see the world in the same way again.

The Matter With Things by Iain McGilchrist

Perspectiva, pp. 1500, £89.95

Slightly revised for clarity from https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/know-your-left-from-your-right-the-brain-s-divided-hemispheres?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Know+Your+Left+from+your+Right+Brain+%2F+Insights+from+The+Matter+with+Things&utm_campaign=Members+%2B+Non-Members+email+%2349+-+March+1st+2022