The thesis of the book is that the bihemispheric structure of the brain creates two different “realities,” or experiences of reality, as a result of the different manner in which the left and right hemispheres pay attention to the world. And so it came about that the master was usurped, the people were duped, the domain became a tyranny and eventually it collapsed.”(1) He saw his master’s temperance and forbearance as weakness, not wisdom, and on his missions on the master’s behalf, adopted his mantle as his own – the emissary became contemptuous of his master. Eventually, however, his cleverest and most ambitious vizier, the one he most trusted to do his work, began to see himself as the master, and used his position to advance his own wealth and influence. And so he nurtured and trained carefully his emissaries, in order that they could be trusted. It was not just that it was impossible for him personally to order all needed to be dealt with: as he wisely saw, he needed to keep his distance from and remain ignorant of, such concerns.

As his people flourished and grew in number, the bounds of this small domain spread and with it the need to trust implicitly the emissaries he sent to ensure the safety of its ever more distant parts. “There was once a wise spiritual master, who was the ruler of a small but prosperous domain, and who was known for his selfless devotion to this people.

McGilchrist’s title is taken from a story he has (apparently) misattributed to Nietzsche: Here, though, I have set myself the modest task of taking notes on the Introduction to McGilchrist’s book. I disagree, for reasons that I will spell out in due course. Scientism is the term given to those who advocate that science is the only means of understanding the objective nature of reality and that, in case where they come into conflict, our commonsense descriptions of the world should yield to our scientific ones. I discovered Iain McGilchrist while listening to an interview he did with Jordan Peterson on The Jordan Peterson podcast, which can be heard here. Upon hearing about his book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, I knew it would figure heavily into my dissertation, the basic thesis of which is (informally put) that an epistemic mess is made when we misunderstand the relationship and confuse the boundaries between our commonsense understanding of the world and our technical/analytic/scientific understanding of the world.

The emissary and his master