I purchased this book, after hearing an interview with the author on the Rebel Wisdom website. There is an abridged version, which I read first, and I am now working my way through the main work.
Iain McGilchrist presents a fascinating exploration of the differences between the brain’s left and right hemispheres, and how those differences have affected society, history, and culture. McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent research in neuroscience and psychology to reveal that the difference is profound: the left hemisphere is detail oriented, while the right has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity. McGilchrist then takes the reader on a journey through the history of Western culture, illustrating the tension between these two worlds as revealed in the thought and belief of thinkers and artists from Aeschylus to Magritte.
From a personal point of view this also speaks to the tension that I often feel between a desire to analyze things in their essential details and categories and a discomfort with all such systematizing, which grates with a sense of a wider wholeness and reality.