BOOK REVIEW
The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World
by Iain McGilchrist 2021
About the Author
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar. He is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London.
He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry.
He is the author of a number of books, but is best-known for The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009).
About the Book
‘It’s very simple: this is one of the most important books ever published. And, yes, I do mean ever. It is a thrilling exposition of the nature of reality, and a devastating repudiation of the strident, banal orthodoxy that says it is childish and disreputable to believe that the world is alive with wonder and mystery … No one else could have written this book. McGilchrist’s range is as vast as the subject – which is everything – demands. He is impeccably rigorous, fearlessly honest, and compellingly readable. Put everything else aside. Read this now to know what sort of creature you are and what sort of place you inhabit.’
—Professor Charles Foster, Oxford University
‘A work of remarkable inspiration and erudition, written with the soul and subtlety of a poet, the precision of a philosopher, and the no-nonsense grounding of a true scientist. In its pages, neuropsychology comes into conversation with philosophy, physics with poetry … McGilchrist is the most generous and talented of writers: his fluid account, brilliantly and beautifully argued—and meticulously researched—brings us along with him, step by step, until we too can discern the horizons of a reconfigured world. McGilchrist’s appreciation of ambiguity and paradox only enhances the clarity and vitality of his thought. This is a book of surpassing, even world-historical ambition, and—still more rare—one that delivers on its promise.’
—Professor Louis Sass, Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University
‘We badly need that now-almost-vanishingly rare personage, the true polymath. In Iain McGilchrist, in the nick of time, we have one. In this book, he draws quite magnificently on his post-disciplinary erudition precisely to explain how very much we are losing … it is nothing less than a work of genius, diagnosing our dire predicament in full, and offering a way, instead.’
—Professor Rupert Read, Professor of Philosophy, University of East Anglia
In this landmark new book, Iain McGilchrist addresses some of the oldest and hardest questions humanity faces – ones that, however, have a practical urgency for all of us today. Who are we? What is the world? How can we understand consciousness, matter, space and time? Is the cosmos without purpose or value? Can we really neglect the sacred and divine?
In doing so, he argues that we have become enslaved to an account of things dominated by the brain’s left hemisphere, one that blinds us to an awe-inspiring reality that is all around us, had we but eyes to see it. He suggests that in order to understand ourselves and the world we need science and intuition, reason and imagination, not just one or two; that they are in any case far from being in conflict; and that the brain’s right hemisphere plays the most important part in each. And he shows us how to recognise the ‘signature’ of the left hemisphere in our thinking, so as to avoid making decisions that bring disaster in their wake.
Following the paths of cutting-edge neurology, philosophy and physics, he reveals how each leads us to a similar vision of the world, one that is both profound and beautiful – and happens to be in line with the deepest traditions of human wisdom. It is a vision that returns the world to life, and us to a better way of living in it: one we must embrace if we are to survive.
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