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

Chapter 8: The Ancient World

McGilchrist notes that in prehistoric art there were virtually no faces, and when faces did begin to appear they were expressionless. Faces with expression, and poetry rich in metaphor, began to appear in art in the 6^th century BC and in particular in the 4^th century BC in Greece. From earlier chapters we remember that it is the right hemisphere that processes facial expression.

McGilchrist also notes a shift in direction that sitters faced in their portraits, a shift from presenting the right side of their face to the artist, to presenting the left side of their face. This shift favours the right hemisphere, a shift that was lost again in the Dark Ages and re-emerged in the Renaissance. But Greek civilisation also brought an efflorescence of the left hemisphere – the beginnings of analytic philosophy, codification of laws, and the formalisation of systematic bodies of knowledge.  

The Greeks began the process of  standing back, theorising about the political state, the development of maps, the observation of the stars and the objective of the natural world. Initially, at this time there was a symmetrical, bihemispheric advance and an advance in the functioning of the frontal lobes (that bring distance in space and delay in time) of both hemispheres. This standing back, unfolding, and making explicit our understanding, enables us to see so much more of whatever is, and expanded the capacity of the right hemisphere to reintegrate this understanding implicitly.

But the differences between the two hemispheres were greatly accentuated at this time. Here McGilchrist references Julian Jayne’s book, The origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

Jaynes was also interested in the Ancient World and for reasons related to study of schizophrenia that McGilchrist explains, argued that at this time the separation between the two hemispheres broke down allowing access of the left hemisphere to the workings of the right hemisphere.   McGilchrist believes the opposite; that there was a ‘closing of the door’ between the two hemispheres. This separation brought with it both advantages and disadvantages; the advantage being the necessary distance needed to stand back and gain insight into things we would not otherwise see. Greek drama arose from this, ‘in which thought and feelings of our selves and of others are apparently objectified, and yet returned to us as our own’. But the separation also sowed the seeds of the left-hemisphere isolationism, allowing the left hemisphere to work unchecked.

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Links

Link to: Chapter 8 Commentary

Link to: Image Credits

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