‘The Master and His Emissary’, by Iain McGilchrist: the split brain and the making of the Western world | Babelia

Thinking about how we think is a dizzying act that plunges us into an endless abyss. British neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist has dedicated decades of study to this essential and seemingly insoluble problem. The result is an admirable and necessary book, as well as one of the most important essays of recent decades. McGilchrist argues, supported by a colossal library of scientific evidence spanning nearly 200 pages of bibliography in this edition, that the two hemispheres of the human brain can be considered, in general terms, to be logical and creative; the detail-oriented left hemisphere and the overall-oriented right hemisphere.

These two modes of perception are not exclusive, they simply prioritize one ability over the other. McGilchrist cautions that while it is correct to say that both hemispheres are involved in everything we do, it is important to understand that although each hemisphere is involved in everything, it does so in very different ways. When we sit down to eat a plate of peas, and try to pierce a pea with the fork, the left hemisphere concentrates on selecting this single prey, the pea, as the specific object of our intentions. Meanwhile, the right hemisphere monitors our environment and is attentive to the consequences of our actions: it observes whether someone wants to take away our plate or offer us more peas. These differences apply not only to our individual actions, but also to our collective ones. Without restrictions, a society may favor the left hemisphere and will tend to give up empathy, neglect the environment, and become blind to the consequences of our selfish, present-moment-focused actions. While a right-brain centered society will try to find strategies that benefit the group more or less equally. “The fundamental difference between the hemispheres,” says McGilchrist, “is in the attention they pay to the world.” Because according to McGilchrist “things change depending on the attitude we adopt towards them, the type of attention we pay to them, our disposition towards them”. We are, as the forgotten Amado Nervo romantically wrote, the architects of our destiny.

The more than a thousand pages of The Master and his emissarybrilliantly translated by Dulcinea Otero-Piñeiro, they are divided, like our brain, into two parts. The first explains the most recent scientific research on the nature of the brain and the neurological mechanisms of thought, and how these apply to the creative arts, such as music and speech. Although the two hemispheres play different roles, the important thing is not so much “what” they do but “how” they do it. The second part (the most fascinating for those with little preparation in the biological sciences) analyzes the function of the two hemispheres in Western culture, from ancient Greece to today’s world.

McGilchrist cannot be said to be an optimist. In the past, he says with some nostalgia, the selfish tendencies of the left hemisphere were counterbalanced by our relationship with the natural world, the arts and religion. Today all this has been subverted and today’s world is “increasingly mechanistic, fragmented and decontextualized, marked by an unjustified optimism mixed with paranoia and a sense of emptiness”. In his conclusion, McGilchrist insists on an attempt at balance, because the sciences, he says, like their sister arts “are children of both hemispheres”. This is why McGilchrist says that the power of science is, in his view, “no more and no less than paying patient, detailed attention to the world, and is integral to our interpretation of it and ourselves.” Culture, Simone Weil wisely stated, is “the formation of attention”.

The title of this splendid book refers to the fable (which McGilchrist thinks he remembers is by Nietzsche but which we suspect was invented by the author himself) of a wise master who governs a small but prosperous fiefdom. As the population grows and the fiefdom expands, the lord is forced to rely on emissaries to carry his laws to the farthest reaches of his territory. Over time, one of these emissaries, intelligent and ambitious, begins to use his position to his advantage. The emissary becomes the master, the master’s power is usurped, the people are deceived, the fiefdom becomes a tyranny, and the prosperous land finally collapses into ruin.