The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

763 Pages·2009·4.99 MB·English

by  Iain McGilchrist

THE MASTER AND HIS EMISSARY
Iain McGilchrist is a former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the
Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London, and has researched in
neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore. He taught
English at Oxford University, where he has been three times elected a Fellow of
All Souls College. He works privately in London and otherwise lives on the Isle
of Skye.
I M G
AIN C ILCHRIST
THE
MASTER
AND HIS
EMISSARY
THE DIVIDED BRAIN AND THE
MAKING OF THE WESTERN WORLD
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
Copyright © 2009 Iain McGilchrist
First printed in paperback 2010
Figures 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 2.1 and 2.2 by Advanced Illustrations Ltd
M.C. Escher's “Drawing Hands” © 2009 The M.C. Escher Company–Holland. All rights reserved.
www.mcescher.com
The author and publishers would like to thank Professor Michael Gazzaniga and Professor Nikolai
Nikolaenko for permission to reuse copyright images.
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with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McGilchrist, Iain.
The master and his emissary : the divided brain and the making of the Western world / Iain McGilchrist.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-14878-7 (alk. paper)
1. Cerebral dominance. I. Title. [DNLM: 1. Dominance, Cerebral. 2. Cerebrum—physiology. 3. Cultural
Evolution. 4. Social Change—history. 5. Western World—history. WL 335 M4775m 2009]
QP385.5.M36 2009
612.8'25—dc22
2009011977
Set in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd.
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-300-16892-1 (pbk)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
2013 2012 2011 2010
CONTENTS
Cover
Title
Copyright
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Master and His Emissary
PART ONE: THE DIVIDED BRAIN
Chapter 1 Asymmetry and the Brain
Chapter 2 What do the Two Hemispheres ‘Do’?
Chapter 3 Language, Truth and Music
Chapter 4 The Nature of the Two Worlds
Chapter 5 The Primacy of the Right Hemisphere
Chapter 6 The Triumph of the Left Hemisphere
PART TWO: HOW THE BRAIN HAS SHAPED OUR WORLD
Chapter 7 Imitation and the Evolution of Culture
Chapter 8 The Ancient World
Chapter 9 The Renaissance and the Reformation
Chapter 10 The Enlightenment
Chapter 11 Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution
Chapter 12 The Modern and PostModern Worlds
Conclusion: The Master Betrayed
Notes
Bibliography
Index
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Illustrations within text Fig. 1.1 Embryonic origins of the cerebral hemispheres
and other brain regions Fig. 1.2 The brain viewed from above, showing the
corpus callosum Fig. 1.3 The brain viewed from the left side Fig. 1.4
Yakovlevian torque Fig. 2.1 Prefrontal cortex and limbic system Fig. 2.2
Diencephalon, basal ganglia and limbic system Fig. 2.3 Templates copied by
patients with neglect (© 2008 by Nigel J. T. Thomas) Fig. 2.4 Emergence of the
Gestalt Fig. 2.5 Split-brain subjects and sense of the whole (Gazzaniga & Le
Doux, 1978) Fig. 2.6 Right hemisphere damage and loss of the sense of the
whole (Hécaen & Ajuriaguerra, 1952) Fig. 2.7 Hemisphere differences and the
whole (Nikolaenko, 2001) Fig. 2.8 Hemisphere differences and abstraction
(Nikolaenko, 1997) Fig. 2.9 Hemisphere differences and visual depth
(Nikolaenko, 1997) Fig. 2.10 Hemisphere differences: what we see v. what we
know (Nikolaenko, 1997) Fig. 2.11 Cube drawing before and after
commissurotomy (Gazzaniga & Le Doux, 1978) Fig. 2.12 Duck-rabbit (Popular
Science Monthly, 1899) Fig. 2.13 Necker cube Fig. 4.1 Drawing Hands, by M.
C. Escher Fig. 4.2 Pyramid of values according to Scheler Fig. 4.3 Creation of
Man, by Michelangelo, fresco, 1511–12 (Vatican Museums and
Galleries/Bridgeman Art Library) Fig. 9.1 Bishop blessing annual fair, from
mediaeval pontifical vellum (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Lat 962
f.264/Bridgeman Art Library)
Fig. 9.2 Ideal City, by Luciano Laurana, oil on panel, after 1470 (Galleria
Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino/Bridgeman Art Library) Fig. 9.3 Sermon in the
Hall of the Reformed Community of Stein near Nuremberg, attrib. Lorenz
Strauch, c. 1620
Fig. 10.1 Matière à réflection pour les jongleurs couronnées, by Villeneuve,
1793
Fig. 11.1 The Coliseum, by Antonio Lafréri, c. 1550 (Metropolitan Museum of
Art) Fig. 11.2 The Coliseum, by Louis Ducros, late 18th century (private
collection/© Agnew's, London/Bridgeman Art Library) Fig. 12.1 Turin Spring,
by Giorgio de Chirico, oil on canvas, 1914 (private collection/Peter
Willi/Bridgeman Art Library/© DACS 2009) Fig. 12.2 Woman in a Red
Armchair, by Pablo Picasso, oil on canvas, 1932 (Musée Picasso,
Paris/Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library © Succession Picasso/DACS 2009) Plate
section
Rights were not granted to include the following illustrations in electronic media. Please refer to print
publication.
1. Album p. XVII, by Barbara Honywood, mid-19th century (Bethlem Royal
Hospital Archives: photograph by author) 2. Hallucinations V, by David Chick,
mid-20th century (Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives: photograph by author) 3.
Resurrection of the Dead, St Saviour in Khora, Istanbul, early 14th century 4.
Christ and His Mother, St Saviour in Khora, Istanbul, early 14th century 5.
Adoration of the Shepherds, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, fresco, 1485 (Sassetti
Chapel, Santa Trinità, Florence/Bridgeman Art Library) 6. The Ambassadors, by
Hans Holbein the Younger, oil on panel, 1533 (National Gallery,
London/Bridgeman Art Library) 7. Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen
of Sheba, by Claude Lorrain, oil on canvas, 1648 (National Gallery,
London/Bridgeman Art Library) 8. Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag
of Sylvia, by Claude Lorrain, oil on canvas, 1682 (© Ashmolean Museum,
University of Oxford/Bridgeman Art Library) 9. Scene from ‘The Last of the
Mohicans’ by James Fenimore Cooper, by Thomas Cole, oil on canvas, 1826
(Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York/Bridgeman Art Library) 10.
The Conflagration, by Albert Bierstadt, oil on paper, late 19th century
(Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts/Bridgeman Art Library) 11.
Frontispiece from Milton: a Poem in 2 Books, by William Blake, 1804–11 (©
The Trustees of the British Museum) 12. Large Reclining Nude, by Henri
Matisse, 1935 (Baltimore Art Gallery/© Succession H Matisse/DACS 2009) 13.
The Muse, by Pablo Picasso, oil on canvas, 1935 (Musée National d'Art
Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris/Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library/©
Succession Picasso/DACS 2009) 14. La Lunette d'Approche, by René Magritte,
1963 (Menil Collection, Houston)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Charles II apologised that he had been ‘an unconscionable time a-dying’. This
book has been an unconscionable time in coming to birth. The intellectual debts
I have incurred during the twenty years I have been gestating it are many, and I
can mention only a few. First and foremost, as will be obvious to many readers, I
am hugely indebted to the ground-breaking work of John Cutting, especially to
his Principles of Psychopathology, which was a revelation to me, but also to
much else of his thought, research and conversation over the years, all of which
has helped me more than I can say; and of Louis Sass, particularly his Madness
& Modernism and The Paradoxes of Delusion. Their massively important work
stands behind every page I have written; and, whether or not I have been able to
make much of the view, they are the giants on whose shoulders I stand. Both
have been generous in their encouragement, and Louis Sass has given liberally
of his time in reading various versions of this book, in the process making many
valuable suggestions, for which I am deeply grateful.
I should like particularly to thank others that have helped through their
comments on parts or all of the manuscript at some stage, including Alwyn
Lishman, Sir Geoffrey Lloyd, David Lorimer, David Malone, John Onians,
Christopher Pelling, Andrew Shanks, Martin Sixsmith, and Nicholas Spice; and I
owe a very special debt of gratitude to John Wakefield for his careful attention to
succeeding drafts and for his unstinting support throughout. His rare ability to
combine tact with a shrewd incisiveness has made a huge difference and saved
me from many errors. I have benefitted from correspondence with Milton
Brener, whose book Faces I found stimulating and original. I am also indebted to
Edward Hussey for advice on Greek, and to Catherine Baxter, Lotte Bredt, and
Martin Sixsmith for advice on French, German and Russian respectively. It goes
without saying that the faults, and errors, that remain are entirely my own.
I am very grateful for the constant support and enthusiastic commitment of
Anthony Goff at David Higham, and of my editor, Phoebe Clapham, whose
advice and suggestions have proved extremely helpful, as well as to Yale
University Press as a whole for believing in this book from the outset. I should
also mention my apparently omniscient copy-editor, Jenny Roberts, but there are
many others at Yale who have contributed in different ways.
I owe much to the generosity of the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College,
Oxford. My first election there more than thirty years ago enabled me to explore
many things at my own pace, and my subsequent re-election in the 1990s
enabled me to maintain a link with academe during years crammed with other
commitments. Their forbearance in offering me a further Fellowship in 2002-
2004 enabled me to host a conference there on phenomenology and brain
lateralisation in 2004, which played an important part in bringing this book to
birth. I am also very much indebted to the unfailing kindness and good humour
of my clinical colleagues, especially my dear friends Jeremy Broadhead and
David Wood, who have so willingly taken care of my patients during the periods
of enforced solitude that writing this book has entailed; as well as to my patients
themselves for their understanding, and for the constant source of inspiration and
instruction that they have afforded me.
INTRODUCTION
THE MASTER AND HIS EMISSARY
T
HIS BOOK TELLS A STORY ABOUT OURSELVES AND THE WORLD, AND ABOUT HOW WE
got to be where we are now. While much of it is about the structure of the human
brain – the place where mind meets matter – ultimately it is an attempt to
understand the structure of the world that the brain has in part created.
Whatever the relationship between consciousness and the brain – unless the
brain plays no role in bringing the world as we experience it into being, a
position that must have few adherents – its structure has to be significant. It
might even give us clues to understanding the structure of the world it mediates,
the world we know. So, to ask a very simple question, why is the brain so clearly
and profoundly divided? Why, for that matter, are the two cerebral hemispheres
asymmetrical? Do they really differ in any important sense? If so, in what way?
The subject of hemisphere differences has a poor track record, discouraging to
those who wish to be sure that they are not going to make fools of themselves in
the long run. Views on the matter have gone through a number of phases since it
was first noticed in the mid-nineteenth century that the hemispheres were not
identical, and that there seemed to be a clear asymmetry of function related to
language, favouring the left hemisphere. At first, it was believed that, apart from
each hemisphere obviously having sensory and motor responsibility for, and
control of, the opposite (or ‘contralateral’) side of the body, language was the
defining difference, the main specific task of the left hemisphere. The right
hemisphere was considered to be essentially ‘silent’. Then it was discovered
that, after all, the right hemisphere appeared better equipped than the left
hemisphere to handle visual imagery, and this was accepted as the particular
contribution it made, its equivalent to language: words in the left hemisphere,
pictures in the right. But that, too, proved unsatisfactory. Both hemispheres, it is
now clear, can deal with either kind of material, words or images, in different
ways. Subsequent attempts to decide which set of functions are segregated in
which hemisphere have mainly been discarded, piece after piece of evidence
suggesting that every identifiable human activity is actually served at some level
by both hemispheres. There is, apparently, vast redundancy. Enthusiasm for
finding the key to hemisphere differences has waned, and it is no longer