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The Master and His Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
Introduction
The questions that brought McGilchrist to the writing of this book were, ‘Why is the brain divided?’ and ‘Why are the two hemispheres asymmetrical?’ In recent years discussion of hemisphere differences has been discredited, but McGilchrist insists that these differences remain important, whilst strongly stating that both hemispheres do almost everything, but also pointing out that the relationship between the hemispheres is asymmetrical. For only a very small number of people – a subset of left handers and those with schizophrenia, dyslexia, autism etc., does the normal partitioning of brain function break down.
In this book McGilchrist expounds his thesis that:
‘….. for us as human beings there are two fundamentally opposed realities, two different modes of experience;
[….] each is of ultimate importance in bringing about the recognisably human world; [….] their difference is
rooted in the bihemispheric structure of the brain. It follows that the hemispheres need to co-operate, but I
believe they are in fact involved in a sort of power struggle, and that this explains many aspects of contemporary Western culture.’ p.3
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Links
Link to: Introduction Commentary
Link to a PDF of the Introduction: https://iainmcgilchrist.com/wpcontent/uploads/2020/02/The_Master_and_his_Emissary_by_McGilchrist.pdf
Link to: Image Credits
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