The Good, The Beautiful and The True – Dr Iain McGilchrist: two day in- person event at The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford – Saturday 2nd May and Sunday 3rd May 2026
This event was organised and hosted by Channel McGilchrist & and The Scientific and Medical Network
A special thank you to all attendees for making this such a wonderful event, both in person and online.
The recording of this event is now available for purchase using the form below.
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Event description
In this two-day event at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, Dr Iain McGilchrist will explore The Good, The Beautiful and The True.
With an increasingly exclusive reliance on the left hemispheric way of being in the world, to the exclusion of the more intelligent and insightful way of being of the right hemisphere, our modern age fails to understand the concepts of the good, the beautiful and the true, and takes them to be ancient ideals that are now irrelevant – or even meaningless.
Across two days of lectures and reflection, a panel discussion, and audience Q&As, Dr McGilchrist will argue that we dismiss the good, the beautiful and the true at our peril: their intrinsic nature is woven into the very fabric of the cosmos itself.
He has invited guest speakers, writer, mythographer and Christian thinker, Dr Martin Shaw, philosopher and specialist in the ancient Greek world and author of Why Plato Matters Now Professor Angie Hobbs, cosmologist, healer, futurist and author Dr Jude Currivan, and director of the Scientific and Medical Network David Lorimer, to share their views.
Lectures
Dr Iain McGilchrist – Lecture 1 ‘The Value of Value’
Lecture 2 ‘So How Do We Remake the World (Because We Can)?’
Dr Martin Shaw – ‘Mythic Reality And The Arising Of Value’
In his lecture Dr Martin Shaw draws on myth, nature and religious liturgy as component elements in the arising of value. Not as an arid set of laws, but repeated immersion in the numinous powers of beauty. From Christian and folkloric traditions, Shaw gives examples of how such repeated exposure can contribute to cultural traditions that raise up what is most merciful and creative in the human condition.
Professor Angie Hobbs – ‘Platonic Proportions: Beauty, Harmony and a Good Life’
Beauty is of central importance throughout Plato’s works. In this talk, Angie Hobbs discusses the role of harmony in Plato and considers how, when internalized in the psyche, it equates to virtue, mental health and flourishing. She argues that Plato’s thinking on proportion and harmony has its roots in the Pythagorean application of mathematics to musical theory and the cosmos as a whole, and shows how Plato develops their work and extends it to the human psyche and society, emphasising the vital importance of aesthetic education and early immersion in physical beauty.
Dr Jude Currivan – ‘How the Unitive Science of a Living Universe Embodies Beauty, Truth and Goodness’
Scientific discoveries at all scales and across numerous fields of research are turning the old paradigm of a mechanistic Universe, on its head. Instead, the evidence is revealing that our essentially living Universe meaningfully exists and purposefully evolves, from simplicity to diversity, complexity and individuated self-awareness.
This emergent new understanding converging with universal wisdom teachings, invites us to re-member that Beauty, Truth and Goodness are embodied in its foundational nature.
David Lorimer – ‘Embodying and Enacting Love, Wisdom and Truth’
In the teaching of the Bulgarian sage Peter Deunov (Beinsa Douno, 1864-1944), Love, Wisdom and Truth are characterised as fundamental principles, with two further ones making the pentagram of five: Justice and Goodness (Virtue). Deunov stressed that these universal principles are not divisive belief systems, but have to be understood and applied. He further explained that Love brings Life, Wisdom brings Light, and Truth brings Freedom. They correspond respectively to the cultivation of the heart, the mind, and the will. He embodied these principles in his sacred dance movements Paneurhythmy, which he choreographed, and for which he composed the music. The musicians stand in the middle of a circle of dancers, and the exercise as a whole represents the harmonious collaboration of humanity, connecting us to the Earth, the Heavens, and to each other. The principles also give us a compass direction for the co-creation of a future culture of Love, Wisdom, Truth, Justice, and Goodness. This is our collective task.