Author: Iain McGilchrist
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300245920
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 615
Book Description
A new edition of the bestselling classic – published with a special introduction to mark its 10th anniversary This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain – the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the ‘rational’ side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master. As he shows, it is the right side which is the more reliable and insightful. Without it, our world would be mechanistic – stripped of depth, colour and value.
The Master and His Emissary
Author: Iain McGilchrist
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300245920
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 615
Book Description
A new edition of the bestselling classic – published with a special introduction to mark its 10th anniversary This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain – the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the ‘rational’ side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master. As he shows, it is the right side which is the more reliable and insightful. Without it, our world would be mechanistic – stripped of depth, colour and value.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300245920
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 615
Book Description
A new edition of the bestselling classic – published with a special introduction to mark its 10th anniversary This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain – the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the ‘rational’ side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master. As he shows, it is the right side which is the more reliable and insightful. Without it, our world would be mechanistic – stripped of depth, colour and value.
The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
Author: Iain McGilchrist
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300190026
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
In this 10,000-word essay, written to complement Iain McGilchrist's acclaimed The Master and His Emissary, the author asks why - despite the vast increase in material well-being - people are less happy today than they were half a century ago, and suggests that the division between the two hemispheres of the brain has a critical effect on how we see and understand the world around us. In particular, McGilchrist suggests, the left hemisphere's obsession with reducing everything it sees to the level of minute, mechanistic detail is robbing modern society of the ability to understand and appreciate deeper human values. Accessible to readers who haven't yet read The Master and His Emissary as well as those who have, this is a fascinating, immensely thought-provoking essay that delves to the very heart of what it means to be human.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300190026
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
In this 10,000-word essay, written to complement Iain McGilchrist's acclaimed The Master and His Emissary, the author asks why - despite the vast increase in material well-being - people are less happy today than they were half a century ago, and suggests that the division between the two hemispheres of the brain has a critical effect on how we see and understand the world around us. In particular, McGilchrist suggests, the left hemisphere's obsession with reducing everything it sees to the level of minute, mechanistic detail is robbing modern society of the ability to understand and appreciate deeper human values. Accessible to readers who haven't yet read The Master and His Emissary as well as those who have, this is a fascinating, immensely thought-provoking essay that delves to the very heart of what it means to be human.
Ways of Attending
Author: Iain McGilchrist
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042978869X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 33
Book Description
Attention is not just receptive, but actively creative of the world we inhabit. How we attend makes all the difference to the world we experience. And nowadays in the West we generally attend in a rather unusual way: governed by the narrowly focussed, target-driven left hemisphere of the brain. Forget everything you thought you knew about the difference between the hemispheres, because it will be largely wrong. It is not what each hemisphere does – they are both involved in everything – but how it does it, that matters. And the prime difference between the brain hemispheres is the manner in which they attend. For reasons of survival we need one hemisphere (in humans and many animals, the left) to pay narrow attention to detail, to grab hold of things we need, while the other, the right, keeps an eye out for everything else. The result is that one hemisphere is good at utilising the world, the other better at understanding it. Absent, present, detached, engaged, alienated, empathic, broad or narrow, sustained or piecemeal, attention has the power to alter whatever it meets. The play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged. How you attend to something – or don’t attend to it – matters a very great deal. This book helps you to see what it is you may have been trained by our very unusual culture not to see.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042978869X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 33
Book Description
Attention is not just receptive, but actively creative of the world we inhabit. How we attend makes all the difference to the world we experience. And nowadays in the West we generally attend in a rather unusual way: governed by the narrowly focussed, target-driven left hemisphere of the brain. Forget everything you thought you knew about the difference between the hemispheres, because it will be largely wrong. It is not what each hemisphere does – they are both involved in everything – but how it does it, that matters. And the prime difference between the brain hemispheres is the manner in which they attend. For reasons of survival we need one hemisphere (in humans and many animals, the left) to pay narrow attention to detail, to grab hold of things we need, while the other, the right, keeps an eye out for everything else. The result is that one hemisphere is good at utilising the world, the other better at understanding it. Absent, present, detached, engaged, alienated, empathic, broad or narrow, sustained or piecemeal, attention has the power to alter whatever it meets. The play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged. How you attend to something – or don’t attend to it – matters a very great deal. This book helps you to see what it is you may have been trained by our very unusual culture not to see.
The Matter with Things
Author: Iain McGilchrist
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781914568060
Category : Neuropsychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Is the world essentially inert and mechanical - nothing but a collection of things for us to use? Are we ourselves nothing but the playthings of chance, embroiled in a war of all against all? Why, indeed, are we engaged in destroying everything that is valuable to us? Whitehead observed that philosophy is of urgent importance because 'as we think, we live.' This book argues that if we are wreaking havoc on ourselves and the world, and if our best intentions lead to paradoxical outcomes, it is because we have become mesmerised by a mechanistic, reductionist way of thinking, the product of a brain system which evolved not to help us understand, but merely to manipulate the world: that of the left hemisphere. We have become blind to what the subtler, more intelligent and more perceptive right hemisphere sees. Consequently we no longer seem to have the faintest idea who we are, what the world is, or how we relate to it. Indeed there is a sense in which we no longer live in a world at all, but exist in a simulacrum of our own making. This book offers a vitally necessary and radically new vision, one that is rigorously based in the science of the brain, deeply grounded in philosophy and sustained by the most up-to-date findings of physics: a vision that inverts common assumptions about what matters; sees the whole, not just the parts; and helps us break out of the hall of mirrors. In doing so it must attempt the hardest, because most fundamental, questions of all: what can we say of time, space, motion, matter, consciousness, purpose, value and the existence or otherwise of a God? The resulting world-picture is not just consistent across different disciplines, but happens to be in line with the deepest traditions of human wisdom. It is to this 'unconcealing' of a world that is rich, complex and beautiful that the reader is invited. If we are to survive - and for our survival even to matter - w need to become aware of what is, at a fundamental level, the matter with things.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781914568060
Category : Neuropsychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Is the world essentially inert and mechanical - nothing but a collection of things for us to use? Are we ourselves nothing but the playthings of chance, embroiled in a war of all against all? Why, indeed, are we engaged in destroying everything that is valuable to us? Whitehead observed that philosophy is of urgent importance because 'as we think, we live.' This book argues that if we are wreaking havoc on ourselves and the world, and if our best intentions lead to paradoxical outcomes, it is because we have become mesmerised by a mechanistic, reductionist way of thinking, the product of a brain system which evolved not to help us understand, but merely to manipulate the world: that of the left hemisphere. We have become blind to what the subtler, more intelligent and more perceptive right hemisphere sees. Consequently we no longer seem to have the faintest idea who we are, what the world is, or how we relate to it. Indeed there is a sense in which we no longer live in a world at all, but exist in a simulacrum of our own making. This book offers a vitally necessary and radically new vision, one that is rigorously based in the science of the brain, deeply grounded in philosophy and sustained by the most up-to-date findings of physics: a vision that inverts common assumptions about what matters; sees the whole, not just the parts; and helps us break out of the hall of mirrors. In doing so it must attempt the hardest, because most fundamental, questions of all: what can we say of time, space, motion, matter, consciousness, purpose, value and the existence or otherwise of a God? The resulting world-picture is not just consistent across different disciplines, but happens to be in line with the deepest traditions of human wisdom. It is to this 'unconcealing' of a world that is rich, complex and beautiful that the reader is invited. If we are to survive - and for our survival even to matter - w need to become aware of what is, at a fundamental level, the matter with things.
The Right Way to Flourish
Author: John Ehrenfeld
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100001164X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
In this ground-breaking book, pre-eminent thought leader in the fields of sustainability and flourishing, John R. Ehrenfeld, critiques the concept of sustainability as it is understood today and which is coming more and more under attack as unclear and ineffective as a call for action. Building upon the recent work of cognitive scientist, Iain McGilchrist, who argues that the human brain’s two hemispheres present distinct different worlds, this book articulates how society must replace the current foundational left-brain-based beliefs – a mechanistic world and a human driven by self interest – with new ones based on complexity and care. Flourishing should replace the lifeless metrics now being used to guide business and government, as well as individuals. Until we accept that our modern belief structure is, itself, the barrier, we will continue to be mired in an endless succession of unsolved problems.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100001164X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
In this ground-breaking book, pre-eminent thought leader in the fields of sustainability and flourishing, John R. Ehrenfeld, critiques the concept of sustainability as it is understood today and which is coming more and more under attack as unclear and ineffective as a call for action. Building upon the recent work of cognitive scientist, Iain McGilchrist, who argues that the human brain’s two hemispheres present distinct different worlds, this book articulates how society must replace the current foundational left-brain-based beliefs – a mechanistic world and a human driven by self interest – with new ones based on complexity and care. Flourishing should replace the lifeless metrics now being used to guide business and government, as well as individuals. Until we accept that our modern belief structure is, itself, the barrier, we will continue to be mired in an endless succession of unsolved problems.
The Idea of the Brain
Author: Matthew Cobb
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 154164686X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
An "elegant", "engrossing" (Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal) examination of what we think we know about the brain and why -- despite technological advances -- the workings of our most essential organ remain a mystery. "I cannot recommend this book strongly enough."--Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm For thousands of years, thinkers and scientists have tried to understand what the brain does. Yet, despite the astonishing discoveries of science, we still have only the vaguest idea of how the brain works. In The Idea of the Brain, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb traces how our conception of the brain has evolved over the centuries. Although it might seem to be a story of ever-increasing knowledge of biology, Cobb shows how our ideas about the brain have been shaped by each era's most significant technologies. Today we might think the brain is like a supercomputer. In the past, it has been compared to a telegraph, a telephone exchange, or some kind of hydraulic system. What will we think the brain is like tomorrow, when new technology arises? The result is an essential read for anyone interested in the complex processes that drive science and the forces that have shaped our marvelous brains.
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 154164686X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
An "elegant", "engrossing" (Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal) examination of what we think we know about the brain and why -- despite technological advances -- the workings of our most essential organ remain a mystery. "I cannot recommend this book strongly enough."--Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm For thousands of years, thinkers and scientists have tried to understand what the brain does. Yet, despite the astonishing discoveries of science, we still have only the vaguest idea of how the brain works. In The Idea of the Brain, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb traces how our conception of the brain has evolved over the centuries. Although it might seem to be a story of ever-increasing knowledge of biology, Cobb shows how our ideas about the brain have been shaped by each era's most significant technologies. Today we might think the brain is like a supercomputer. In the past, it has been compared to a telegraph, a telephone exchange, or some kind of hydraulic system. What will we think the brain is like tomorrow, when new technology arises? The result is an essential read for anyone interested in the complex processes that drive science and the forces that have shaped our marvelous brains.
The God of the Left Hemisphere
Author: Roderick Tweedy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429920903
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
The God of the Left Hemisphere explores the remarkable connections between the activities and functions of the human brain that writer William Blake termed 'Urizen' and the powerful complex of rationalising and ordering processes which modern neuroscience identifies as 'left hemisphere' brain activity. The book argues that Blake's profound understanding of the human brain is finding surprising corroboration in recent neuroscientific discoveries, such as those of the influential Harvard neuro-anatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, and it explores Blake's provocative supposition that the emergence of these rationalising, law-making, and 'limiting' activities within the human brain has been recorded in the earliest Creation texts, such as the Hebrew Bible, Plato's Timaeus, and the Norse sagas. Blake's prescient insight into the nature and origins of this dominant force within the brain allows him to radically reinterpret the psychological basis of the entity usually referred to in these texts as 'God'. The book draws in particular on the work of Bolte Taylor, whose study in this area is having a profound impact on how we understand mental activity and processes.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429920903
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
The God of the Left Hemisphere explores the remarkable connections between the activities and functions of the human brain that writer William Blake termed 'Urizen' and the powerful complex of rationalising and ordering processes which modern neuroscience identifies as 'left hemisphere' brain activity. The book argues that Blake's profound understanding of the human brain is finding surprising corroboration in recent neuroscientific discoveries, such as those of the influential Harvard neuro-anatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, and it explores Blake's provocative supposition that the emergence of these rationalising, law-making, and 'limiting' activities within the human brain has been recorded in the earliest Creation texts, such as the Hebrew Bible, Plato's Timaeus, and the Norse sagas. Blake's prescient insight into the nature and origins of this dominant force within the brain allows him to radically reinterpret the psychological basis of the entity usually referred to in these texts as 'God'. The book draws in particular on the work of Bolte Taylor, whose study in this area is having a profound impact on how we understand mental activity and processes.
Changes of Mind
Author: Jenny Wade
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791428498
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
An original theory of the development of consciousness that brings together research from neurology, new-paradigm studies, psychology, and mysticism.
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791428498
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
An original theory of the development of consciousness that brings together research from neurology, new-paradigm studies, psychology, and mysticism.
Biblical Words and Their Meaning
Author: Moisés Silva
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 9780310479819
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
This revised and expanded edition presents a comprehensive exposition of biblical lexicology. .
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 9780310479819
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
This revised and expanded edition presents a comprehensive exposition of biblical lexicology. .
The Madman's Library
Author: Edward Brooke-Hitching
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471166929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373
Book Description
* BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK * 'Anybody who loves the printed word will be bowled over by this amusing, erudite, beautiful book about books. It is in every way a triumph. One of the loveliest books to have been published for many, many years' Alexander McCall Smith 'Quite simply the best gift for any book lover this year, or perhaps ever' Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times Literary Book of the Year 'An utterly joyous journey into the deepest eccentricities of the human mind… The most cheering, fascinating book I’ve read for ages' Guardian From the author of the critically acclaimed and globally successful The Phantom Atlas, The Golden Atlas and The Sky Atlas comes a stunning new work. The Madman’s Library is a unique, beautifully illustrated journey through the entire history of literature, delving into its darkest territories to hunt down the very strangest books ever written, and uncover the fascinating stories behind their creation. This is a madman’s library of eccentric and extraordinary volumes from around the world, many of which have been completely forgotten. Books written in blood and books that kill, books of the insane and books that hoaxed the globe, books invisible to the naked eye and books so long they could destroy the Universe, books worn into battle, books of code and cypher whose secrets remain undiscovered… and a few others that are just plain weird. From the 605-page Qur'an written in the blood of Saddam Hussein, through the gorgeously decorated 15th-century lawsuit filed by the Devil against Jesus, to the lost art of binding books with human skin, every strand of strangeness imaginable (and many inconceivable) has been unearthed and bound together for a unique and richly illustrated collection ideal for every book-lover.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471166929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373
Book Description
* BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK * 'Anybody who loves the printed word will be bowled over by this amusing, erudite, beautiful book about books. It is in every way a triumph. One of the loveliest books to have been published for many, many years' Alexander McCall Smith 'Quite simply the best gift for any book lover this year, or perhaps ever' Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times Literary Book of the Year 'An utterly joyous journey into the deepest eccentricities of the human mind… The most cheering, fascinating book I’ve read for ages' Guardian From the author of the critically acclaimed and globally successful The Phantom Atlas, The Golden Atlas and The Sky Atlas comes a stunning new work. The Madman’s Library is a unique, beautifully illustrated journey through the entire history of literature, delving into its darkest territories to hunt down the very strangest books ever written, and uncover the fascinating stories behind their creation. This is a madman’s library of eccentric and extraordinary volumes from around the world, many of which have been completely forgotten. Books written in blood and books that kill, books of the insane and books that hoaxed the globe, books invisible to the naked eye and books so long they could destroy the Universe, books worn into battle, books of code and cypher whose secrets remain undiscovered… and a few others that are just plain weird. From the 605-page Qur'an written in the blood of Saddam Hussein, through the gorgeously decorated 15th-century lawsuit filed by the Devil against Jesus, to the lost art of binding books with human skin, every strand of strangeness imaginable (and many inconceivable) has been unearthed and bound together for a unique and richly illustrated collection ideal for every book-lover.