The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World Paperback – 1 Mar. 2023

“This book is what would conventionally be called a single argument. That is why I have chosen not to publish it as three separate books: one on neuropsychology – how our brains shape reality; one on epistemology – how we can come to know anything at all; and one on metaphysics – the nature of what we find in the cosmos. It is intended as a single whole, each part illuminating, and in turn illumined by, the others.” I suspect there are already dozens, if not hundreds, of reviews of this book out there. This review is framed by my concern with the spiritual journey and the place of meditation in that journey, but also by a lifelong interest in science and the fundamental nature of consciousness and reality. I should perhaps begin by issuing a warning – The Matter with Things is not an easy read, and it is not cheap; it is very long (nearly 3,000 pages includes notes, appendices and references). McGilchrist writes exceptionally well but his subject matter is often technical and intellectually challenging; it is definitely not a “skim” read. He does conclude each of the book’s three sections with a summary, but if you left it at that you would miss out on the enormous riches of his references and arguments. For example, Chapter 12 - “The science of life: a study in left hemisphere capture” – is over 100 pages of dense argument about the innate intelligence of living systems, from microbes in the gut to the whole organism. It was a revelation to me, particularly so as I have been brought up to believe that biology is essentially mechanical, driven by DNA, which is usually described simply as a set of instructions, as it were a computer program. That McGilchrist maintains this is absolutely not the case is one of several important themes in the book. Despite its price, the book has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. It is now available in paperback (only £49!) and as an ebook (£30). It is extraordinarily wide ranging, covering everything from literature, art, music and philosophy to quantum physics, microbiology, neurology and psychology. This reflects McGilchrist’s own idiosyncratic and, by comparison with most of his peers, extravagantly catholic academic journey, from theology, philosophy and literature to medicine, neurobiology and psychiatry, which he has practised for 30 years. A summary of McGilchrist’s argument In 2009, Yale University Press published McGilchrist’s “The Master and his Emissary” in which he set out his thesis that the left and right hemispheres of the brain are asymmetrical and that they have different, albeit complementary, functions. The left hemisphere is specialised for language processing, analytic and logical thinking, detail and abstraction. The right hemisphere has a more diffuse set of functions. He shows that left – right asymmetry holds true throughout the animal kingdom, from worms through reptiles all the way up to human beings. And that there is a simple evolutionary explanation for why this is the case. All creatures, whether prey or predator, face a similar challenge. More or less simultaneously, they need to give attention to the hunt for food, which requires a narrow focus on opportunities immediately to hand (seeds and insects on the ground, fruits and nuts in trees, vulnerable prey animals in their vicinity) and at the same time maintain a general awareness of their environment so as to detect potential threats or opportunities. These are two kinds of attention, one highly focused and specific, immediate and local, the other a more general awareness, taking in the whole scene, not being absorbed or distracted by particular elements. The former is task / goal oriented – kill the gazelle, spot the grain among the pebbles, sand and grasses – while the latter is process oriented, observing changes in the environment over time, noticing novelty and difference. So, classically, the left hemisphere likes to categorise or label features of its input from the right hemisphere, that is, direct experience – “that’s a kind of seed, good to eat”, “those are non-threatening animals” – in order to focus on the particular task it has set itself. The right hemisphere almost by definition does not label or categorise, it does not use language or analysis – it sees things as a whole, as parts of a process, in a context of both space and time. It is much more concerned with direct experience, as opposed to stepping back from sense perceptions and picking out some aspect which is of immediate interest. In “The Master and his Emissary” McGilchrist argues that the Emissary – the left hemisphere – has, like the fabled sorcerer’s apprentice, usurped the role of the Master – the right hemisphere – and is now attempting to do and control everything in the modern, western, developed, post Renaissance / Enlightenment world. He argues that this at the root of many if not all of our modern problems – our poor mental health, environmental degradation, the atomisation and alienation of human beings and the constant frustration of our efforts to “improve” things or “solve” problems. There was, inevitably and unsurprisingly, some considerable pushback against his ideas, particularly from those scientists and others who are very invested in contemporary attitudes to science, human nature and the nature of reality. So “The Matter with Things” is at least in part a response to that pushback, but also a much deeper exploration of the ideas and issues raised by “The Master and his Emissary”. Themes In no particular order, these are some of the themes explored by McGilchrist. That the world is not made of stuff. Reality is not made of things. We and the Cosmos are not machines, assembled from components such as particles or cells, which together function in the same way as clockwork, or the internal combustion engine, or a computer program. Quantum physicists tell us that the deeper they go to explore the nature of things, the more they realise that there are in fact no things. Particles (the smallest bits of matter discovered by machines like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider) are not things, like billiard balls, as the Greeks thought of atoms (that which cannot be any more divided), or as Isaac Newton conceived of the world; rather particles are more like photographs of processes, snapshots of events which are continuing from past to future. So what we see as things, tables, other people, clouds, are more like the wake of a ship, only in the case of reality, there is not even a ship – we just assume there must be one because we can see its wake. This is important, vital even, because what the right hemisphere is tuned to do is to see the overall process, to experience events as taking place in space and time, dynamic, responsive and reacting, parts of webs and networks of phenomena, all of which are connected and affected by every other process. The left hemisphere, for very good evolutionary reasons, operates in a fundamentally different way. It selects elements from the right hemisphere’s experience, freezes them in time and space, so that it can then examine, manipulate and control them. It does not deal in direct sense experience, but in what it considers useful abstractions. If you are operating through the right hemisphere, you do not see an abstraction, a generalised version of say a tree, but a unique process – a living entity, continuously changing in response to its environment. The left hemisphere sees fuel or building material, shade, food, or a component of a formally designed garden or park. It sees only what is useful or harmful to its purpose, not this unique tree as it is in itself. Left brain thinkers and scientists take an analytic, bottom up, materialist approach, where consciousness or awareness are presumed to be merely phenomena, emerging from inanimate matter, possibly as a by-product of complexity. As a result it is impossible for them to imagine that existence / being could have a direction, a telos. That would surely be simply anthropomorphising the universe – how could dead particles, atoms and molecules, machine like cells and organisms have any plan, any sense of a direction? Religious fundamentalists (who are as left hemisphere dominated as materialist scientists like Richard Dawkins) say that all this is engineered by a God, sitting outside and above his creation. However, McGilchrist shows that intelligence goes all the way down – that individual cells are intelligent – and all the way up – entire ecosystems appear to function intelligently and dynamically (see for example the relationships between funghi and woodland). A single-celled amoeba has awareness, agency and memory. Our bodies function as organic wholes – individual cells respond to their immediate environment, but they also signal to and respond to other cells and to the whole organism. We do not live in a bottom up or top down world of stuff – we live as part of wholes, networks, relationships and processes all the way up and all the way down. It’s all one dance. The brain has evolved to deal with reality. The physical structure of our brains and the way they operate is an evolutionary response to reality – they have evolved for a better fit with the world as it is, as indeed have all living organisms. The brain is the way it is because it conforms to reality – which is both one and many – and we need to be able to deal with both aspects in their proper relation. Meditation helps to put the left hemisphere back in its box, by giving it something empty to focus on; which allows the right hemisphere to resume its rightful place and, eventually, for us to rest in this state of awareness continuously.

McGilchrist’s is an ambitious and wide-ranging theory that he works out closely, precisely and logically in detail. His thesis is that the whole history of ideas reflects the working together of the human brains two hemispheres. Yes they overlap in function in almost every way but they differ in subtle ways that are crucial in practice. If the abstracting left hemisphere takes over there is a loss of balance and we (individually and as a society) can mistake our representations of reality for reality itself and see the world as purely a machine for our utilitarian purposes. Fragmentation and delusion result. It is a beautifully written book. It’s hard only because it is densely referenced and it’s long. But there isn’t a single dud or ambiguous sentence. I know because Im a slow reader who reads every sentence underlining as I go. And at times it is funny; I laughed out loud at appendix 1 asMcGilchrist answers a pair of critics on the subject of creativity in chapter 8. He is so thorough in chasing their sources and answering them. And on metaphor p. 410-11! I assume he has been criticised quite a bit as at times he makes the same point e.g. regarding creativity being of the right hemisphere with evidence after evidence after yet more evidence. I guess he is just laying out his case so it can’t be dismissed. It does seem watertight. It is so well worth the money. The two books are big yet whatever page you open them on the book stays open there. What a relief for a book this size not to be engaged in antics to keep it propped open! And the type is clear and bright with some colour plates in the middle. I think - and hope - that this is the book that will finally move us off the crippling deterministic world-view of the machine with its false certitudes. There are many books that critique the limitations of mechanistic world-view (since relativity and quantum mechanics a century ago the flood continues on) but none that explain where (in ourselves) that limited world view has emerged from and why. And how we can move away from it. Yes a solution! This solution is a rebalancing towards the right brain where our deepest wisdom resides. The analytic philosopher who believes in the enlightenment triumph of reason over superstition and religiosity - what is he but an excessively left brain character! His vision is so limited! All he knows is abstractions. He is unable to appreciate the truths of poetry and metaphor. We value the wrong things in education, the arts, science, philosophy because we have become trapped by the limited vision of the left hemisphere. We don’t see the world as it is in its splendid glory. This book ‘shows the fly the way out of the fly- bottle’ as Wittgenstein said that philosophy should do. It should be on reading lists everywhere.

I purchased this book in response to a comment made by a dear friend and non-dual teacher, Rupert Spira, in answer to a question posed on a retreat. I am a long-term meditator (43 years) but also have the sort of mind that asks questions of the deep mystery we inhabit. There is much talk in spiritual circles of ‘making the mind go away’ as if we could do such a thing, or as if the mind is a problem, not something we are born with, along with hands, feet and eyes. This over-simplification has never been helpful for me as I quite enjoy having a brain and spend a lot of time in it, while recognising its inherent drawbacks, if you will. This book is one of the few that have enabled me to understand how our magnificent brains work (at least understand in part) and has therefore contributed profoundly to my life journey. Hitherto it was a bit like being a car driver but not knowing where the gear stick was, screaming along in first gear. A clumsy example but it serves to show how a bit of knowledge can be transformative to one's experience. I see that ‘getting rid of the mind’ could be translated into ‘don’t let your left brain go off on one’ (to misquote McGilchrist). I now have insight into the workings of my own brain and can spot its tendencies (usually in the left hemisphere) to take me away from the present, gently heading them off at the pass. This is just one of the many insights this beautifully written and deeply informative book has given me. And I haven’t even completed it yet (don’t tell me the ending). ‘To understand all is to forgive all’ is a common saying, but I have long thought that ‘to understand all’ is enough. Understanding renders forgiveness redundant. In understanding how the hemispheres work, there is no need to get rid of anything (even if such abstraction were possible). Just understand the brain (as best you can!) and live your life in kindness. I think St Augustine said something similar: Love and do what you will. I work in education and I have long thought that there is a skewed emphasis in our (UK) education system that works in direct opposition to the mental and emotional development and wellbeing of children. I hope to contribute to the body of writing on this topic from my specialist perspective (I work in home education with many special needs children, although that is not exclusively what I do) and this book has helped clarify my thinking and articulate my understanding to hopefully help others in my own field of work. Finally this book is not only one of the most important I have ever bought, it is also one of the heaviest! It is in two volumes but each is too much for this limp-wristed reader, who likes to read supine in bed. To expire from brain injury caused by dropping a heavy book about the hemispheres on one’s head struck me as an irony too far, so I got the kindle version too. I pass that on for what it’s worth, although the physical book is gorgeous and has a nicer layout. Finally I was pleased to discover that Iain McGilchrist lives on Skye, which is my favourite place on earth. I always do my best thinking on that magical isle where ‘the veil between gods and mortals is thin’. It would seem that McGilchrist does too. I am profoundly grateful for both his intellectual scholarship and his deeply developed heart. I am indebted - thank you.

Let me tell you a joke to illustrate the magnitude of Dr. McGilchrist work. One day, God called three souls for three equally important jobs on earth, to the first he said: Adam, you are going to revolutionize the field of economics, I'm tired of seeing people poor and hungry, to which the soul said, yes my lord, and Adam, -said God- keep your "invisible hand" on the table while we are having supper. Next, and the second soul approached God, you James, I command you to free men from the hardships of bearing heavy loads, and create the industrial revolution so Adam's theories can be applied, and humans can have trains and smartphones an all that, the regular stuff; and you, Iain, please fix the mess these two are going to create by explaining what went wrong, why a lot of people feel lost in spite of having abundant material wealth, and good health and pensions, etc. and how can we improve upon. But God, said Iain, if you know they are going to create a mess why don't avoid it all and don't send any of us, and God said: Because what is important is not the WHAT but the HOW. (and if you don't read the book, you probably don't get the whole joke, sorry) I'm on page 259 right now, and although I'm pretty much used to academic book books and heavy reading, Dr. McGilchrist books are as dense as a neutron stars, I have to stop every 10 pages or so to think about what I've read and what I've been introduced to; it is an endless trip, with the next room bigger and wider than the last one. The good thing is that he has the same classic English style as Winston Churchill, very proper and cult, but also poetic and fluid. His mastery of his native language is humbling, but as if that wasn't enough, the amount of knowledge he possesses and is capable of conveying is staggering, but the book is not impressive because is well written and full of interesting facts or ideas, that would turn it into a mere novelty, what makes this book (and his previous book) powerful emotional experience is the fact that at least in my case, when I am reading it, I feel the same as I was looking at The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini or listening to a caprice by Paganini. There is art beyond technique in this academic literary masterpiece, and I'm sure, I wont be the same person after I finished it, and so wont you.

Ian McGilchrist has an exceptional, astonishing yet ultimately credible and perhaps even strangely comforting understanding of how our minds and brains work, how they sometimes fall short or misapprehend what is important, and how they are involved in “making” the worlds that we experience. Each piece, perspective and process of our lives is rooted in and sustained by our brains and minds. He tells his story in a way that balances “structure” and the analytical approach of the left hemisphere, with the more holistic, generative, intuitive insight of the right, along with its humour and easygoing poetic style. But he does so effortlessly and naturally, so it is hard to tell if that is a deliberate choice of styles. He is an excellent writer, as well as a superbly insightful scientist. There are many, many stories, examples, quotations and such like that are used to support his case, but the “theory” he proposes has its own grounding in neutral logic, evidence, and an insight into subjectivity itself. I think this work has some critical implications for various aspects of our lives … partly in medicine and science, and in philosophy … but also, less obviously perhaps, for education, art, economics, commerce, politics. We are working our worlds in ways that are at very least sub-optimal, and probably much worse than that. I would like to hear more about how we might address that issue, which is appearing to me to be increasingly urgent and intractable. I very much enjoyed “The Master and his Emissary” too, but this is a more rounded, deeper work, with a bigger ambition in terms of implications for individuals, and for how we can and indeed should interact with (and as) our societies, communities, teams. It is difficult to find the right words to convey the way this book is both amazing, fresh, innovative … and yet apparently revealing enduring truths that we already half “know”. This book is something that speaks to us from somewhere very special.

I've just finished reading the first two parts of The Matter with Things, and begun part 3 in the second volume. Rather than attempt to summarise the voluminous, varied and rich content of the book (and fall far short of doing it justice), let me simply say that this work does not simply talk about science, reason, intuition and imagination (among so many others), but is masterfully crafted by an author who has much life experience and insight to offer and clearly embodies the best of such paths and qualities. Sadly, I've already seen some comments in the social media from certain detractors who, in spite of not having read this book, believe that they can dismiss the work – which is 1,500 pages in print and 2,997 pages in the Kindle edition, and contains hundred of pages of closely-argued, liberally-referenced and deeply-nuanced text in Part I of the book alone – by posting single articles these “Google scholars” have found while carrying out their “research” (that is, searching the web for material with which to debunk the work). In my opinion (for what little that is worth), it's not a matter of agreeing with the author 100% or, on the other hand, utterly dismissing his work (or even damning it with faint praise), in terms of either/or, black and white, or even shades of grey – which is surely the domain of left hemispheric thinking – but rather a matter of and-both, often in glorious Technicolor; an open-ended exploration and a varied and rich experience, more characteristic of the right hemisphere and with the holistic, transcendent experience of both (where the left is servant to the master, the right). No matter: as the author quotes Friedrich Waismann: “No philosophic argument ends with a QED.” It's not a finite game but a wonderful infinite game, as James P. Carse proposed, in which playing the “game” rather than winning, the journey and the companionship rather than the final destination, is what it's all about. Sooner or later, I trust that we will come to see this in a whole new light (a Gestalt, even) – see that what we are not only witnessing but in the throes of here, in these increasingly “interesting times” is nothing less than a “Copernican Revolution” and “Fall of the Roman Empire” of the psyche (and hence Being). And in this, Iain McGilchrist will have played a major pivotal role. His work could not be more timely and apposite. Having said that: of course your mileage may well vary. Indeed, it would be strange if it did not.

The book is very detailed, with precise references to an extensive bibliography. I was very impressed by the first part of the book which deals with the clinical and measurable properties of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This is something I knew nothing about, and I found it easy to read, humorous in places, and very educational. The second part, about science, reason and intuition, I did not read completely. However, I read the section on science (I am a physicist), and I agree with the author about the limitations yet arrogance of modern science. In part three, "What, then is true?", the big questions of the purpose of life and the nature of the cosmos are tackled. McGilchrist explores the sense of wonder that can arrest us when encountering something so much bigger than our selves or our routine life: music, poetry, the heavens on a dark night. Wonder is the realm of the right hemisphere, usually suppressed by the busy left, yet the author claims is more in touch with reality.

You must read this if you want to understand the world today. Mind blowing.