Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, doctor, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar. McGilchrist came to prominence after the publication of his book The Master and His Emissary, subtitled The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
aware choosing compare comparing depends huge turns whether
To understand something, whether we are aware of it or not, depends on choosing a model. We get to understand what we see by comparing it with something else, something that we think we understand better. But what we compare it with turns out to have a huge influence on the outcome.
genetics pure rarely truth
The truth, it is said, is rarely pure or simple, yet genetics can at times seem seductively transparent.
commands demanded refuses sympathy trump
In Shakespeare, unique individuals repudiate the stereotypes demanded by the structure of the play: Shylock commands our sympathy, Barnardine refuses to be hanged. Individuals trump the category.
contains data fill genome human volumes
The human genome contains so much data that, it has been calculated, it would fill 43 volumes of Webster's International Dictionary.
architecture imperial roman vastness
The imperial vastness of late Roman architecture was made possible by the invention of concrete.
along art heap music perspective tend
Perspective in art has receded along with harmony in music: We tend more and more to see the world as a heap of intrinsically meaningless fragments.
appears literal truth
The world appears rectilinear, but is in fact curvilinear - a literal truth in physics, and a metaphorical one in metaphysics.