The ancient dream of the humanistic physician is realized once again in Ian McGilchrist, a British psychiatrist and neuroscientist who moves with ease and knowledge through the history of culture, philosophy, and art.
“The Master and His Emissary,” an impressive volume … Which is more than a thousand pages, One hundred and seventy of them are references, It is currently his masterpiece.
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author
Ian McGilchrist -
Editorial
Captain Swing -
year
2025 -
Pages
1,071 -
price
32 euros
I don’t know what his fate will be or how far he will go in this strange world of ours where we think we’re amazed by new things all day long when in reality… We spend time repeating the same thoughts, seeing and hearing And saying the same things over and over again.
For me, it is one of those books, like the books of the great thinkers and essayists of all time Able to open an unexplored path to knowledge Opening a new chapter in the history of culture. A unique book, a miracle of human wisdom that discovers new worlds, and reading it leaves the reader in a state of gratitude and amazement.
The first half of the book is devoted to McGilchrist’s big topic: the way the cerebral hemispheres work. In the face of simplifications“pop science”From the ninetiesFor (all those books that taught us how to draw and write “with the right side of the brain”), McGilchrist gives us a detailed and meticulously documented description of how the right side really works.
It shows how the left hemisphere of the brain ended up taking over the world
It is often said, for example, that language is an ability of the left hemisphere (which controls the right side of the body). This is true, as the author says, because in the left half are the words, the lexicon, or the grammar; But on the right side are meaning, pragmatism, irony, intention, metaphor, and connotation—everything that makes communication rich, complex, and truly human. because YesYour thesis has been profusely defended through hundreds of references to books and studiesis that the two sides, the main and most important side, the basis of our humanity, is the right side.
Not the left side, as they say, but the right side, which understands the whole, is able to perceive and comprehend new things, which has an idea of oneself and one’s body, which is capable of feeling empathy, which sees the world as the sum of living parts (and not inert or mechanical, like the left side). The person who understandsIronyAnd the significance, The person who adapts to new situations, the person who learns, the person who knows. The right side is, after all, the “master” of the book’s title. As for the left, it is nothing more than its “envoy.”
The second half of the book is a cultural history of the West in which McGilchrist examines the way brain customization has shaped the world. The main idea is that the left side has ended up taking over our society, such that a much needed balance has been created between the two ways of perceiving reality. For both hemispheres, it is broken.
In the final chapter, “Master Traitor,” McGilchrist wonders what a left-brain world would be like. These pages must be read to be believed. Pages of wonder, of discovery, of revelation. What the author describes in precise detail, and with eerie clarity, is not a fictional world, but our own time. A true intellectual achievement