The Master and His Emissary Conversations

Live Q&A with Iain

Live Q&A with Iain

MEMBERS ONLY

The live Q&A Zoom session with Iain will take place on Thursday 3rd November 2022 from 6:00 to 7:45pm UK time.

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The Divided Brain Conference Retreat

The Divided Brain Conference Retreat

Saturday 8th October – Tuesday 11th October 2022 Tewkesbury Park Hotel – UK

This four day event has been organised by Field & Field and aims to bring together like-minded people immersed in the work and ideas of Dr Iain McGilchrist

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Scottish Daily Mail

Scottish Daily Mail

Genius from Skye who’s written one of the most important books EVER published.
By Jonathan Brocklebank, April 2, 2022

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Insights from ‘The Matter With Things’

Insights from ‘The Matter With Things’

Why is this worth your time? Regular readers will be aware that I think Dr. Iain McGilchrist is one of the most consequential minds of our times. Last month he published a monster 1,400 page book, The Matter With Things. It’s his masterpiece, and an attempt to comprehensively expand on a thesis that has changed my life. I had the privilege of interviewing him last week.

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Adam Smith on Self-Deceit

Adam Smith on Self-Deceit

The University of Virginia Center for Politics, led by Larry Sabato, provides polling results that show deep social, political, and psychological divides between Biden voters and Trump voters. Nowadays, it is common to think that large swaths of other people must be in denial.

In the old days, we argued good policy. Now we theorize one another.

Adam Smith had things to say about denial and self-deceit. Here I draw exclusively from The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  Applications are in your hands—and breast.

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Falling Into The Song Of Gaia

Falling Into The Song Of Gaia

Enchantment is essentially an experience of wonder, and like the experience itself, the subject is hard to pin down. So think of this essay instead as a wander through one corner of it, with glimpses farther afield.

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Tocqueville’s Dystopias: The Bad And The Very Bad

Tocqueville’s Dystopias: The Bad And The Very Bad

Daniel B. Klein September 6, 2021[A version of this piece appeared originally at City Journal.]     Alexis de Tocqueville   “The entire book that you are going to read,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in the Introduction of Democracy in America, Volume One...

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Adeline

Adeline

She was born in August 1915, in Roquefort la Bédoule in the south of France. She died this morning. Adeline Blanc was my adopted grandmother.

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Begotten Not Made

Begotten Not Made

I was pleased to find that the Oxford philosopher JR Lucas was a fan of The Master and his Emissary, and he sent me a number of his papers over the years. Most are still accessible but this gem was possibly never published. Before he died I asked if I could quote from it in my […]

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Economics In Nouns And Verbs

Economics In Nouns And Verbs

Science proceeds as much by its instruments-its technologies-as it does by human thought. In early January 1610, when Galileo directed his telescope at the heavens he found to his astonishment that Jupiter had four companion “stars” (whichafter several nights he realized were moons circling Jupiter), and the Moon itself had mountains and valleys. This went against the long-accepted truths that all heavenly bodies circled the earth (or the sun), and that all were perfect. Instruments in science probe, they reveal, they occasionally surprise, and they illuminate. They become means of understanding.

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The Matrix Of The Emissary

The Matrix Of The Emissary

Several years ago, while a family member was struggling with mental illness, I was introduced to the intriguing idea of ‘right brain to right brain’ therapy. Deciding I should learn more, I searched Amazon for books about ‘right brain therapy’ and was duly recommended The Master and His Emissary…

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Will The Whales Inherit The Earth?

Will The Whales Inherit The Earth?

How can we resist the sixth mass extinction in our imaginations? What kind of cultural shift does it take? In this latest post for The Vanishing series, Rupert Read considers the future of human societies, following in the wake of whales. With artworks by Angela Cockayne.

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‘Notes On The Death Of Culture’ By The Philosopher William Earle

‘Notes On The Death Of Culture’ By The Philosopher William Earle

William Earle: ‘Notes on the Death of Culture’, in MR Stein, AJ Vidich & DM White (eds), Identity and Anxiety, Free Press of Glencoe, 1960, 367-383 In General The culture of the western world has for some time been under diagnosis as though it were a patient sick with an unknown disease. The doctors are […]

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