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Iain McGilchrist's 2009 book The Master And His Emissary: The Divided Brain And The Making Of The Western World stirred up quite the controversy. The author summarized it at TED and chatted with Sam Harris about it.
More recently, McGilchrist wrote a follow up book The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (2021) and I particularly liked this Prospect review by Nick Spencer (even if I didn't completely agree with all the reviewer wrote).
Here are my takes on his thesis:
1. The jump from lateralization of brain function to a diagnosis of the Western world's ailments is a classical non-sequitur that is bolstered with an accomplished neuroscientist/psychologist/English major's sleight of hand for the uninitiated, a plethora of anecdotal events and a polymath's dazzling display of brilliant scientists quotes that seem to undermine the science's claim to rationality (i.e. excessive left-brainism.)
2. His critique of (scientific) reductionism (and left-brainism) is ironically reductionist.
3. A few less reductionist views of what ails modernity (not just the West) can be found as separate and irreducible views here: late capitalism, Baudrillard's Simulacra, prosperity theology, behavioural genetics, Piketty's various dissections of wealth distribution in the past centuries, Acemoglu's Why Nations Fail and creative destruction.
4. My positive take from McGilchrist's thesis: the world does swing too hard to the extremes (e.g. right-brained theocracy vs left-brained technocracy), and it would behoove us all to strive for a more balanced world.
Disclaimer: I only skimmed the first book (and read whole sections of the last chapter), but I read numerous reviews of both books and listened to both his TED summary and the first hour of the Sam Harris dialogue with the author.
More recently, McGilchrist wrote a follow up book The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (2021) and I particularly liked this Prospect review by Nick Spencer (even if I didn't completely agree with all the reviewer wrote).
Here are my takes on his thesis:
1. The jump from lateralization of brain function to a diagnosis of the Western world's ailments is a classical non-sequitur that is bolstered with an accomplished neuroscientist/psychologist/English major's sleight of hand for the uninitiated, a plethora of anecdotal events and a polymath's dazzling display of brilliant scientists quotes that seem to undermine the science's claim to rationality (i.e. excessive left-brainism.)
2. His critique of (scientific) reductionism (and left-brainism) is ironically reductionist.
3. A few less reductionist views of what ails modernity (not just the West) can be found as separate and irreducible views here: late capitalism, Baudrillard's Simulacra, prosperity theology, behavioural genetics, Piketty's various dissections of wealth distribution in the past centuries, Acemoglu's Why Nations Fail and creative destruction.
4. My positive take from McGilchrist's thesis: the world does swing too hard to the extremes (e.g. right-brained theocracy vs left-brained technocracy), and it would behoove us all to strive for a more balanced world.
Disclaimer: I only skimmed the first book (and read whole sections of the last chapter), but I read numerous reviews of both books and listened to both his TED summary and the first hour of the Sam Harris dialogue with the author.
