Iain McGilchrist

music communication words language

“Compared with music all communication by words is shameless; words dilute and brutalise; words depersonalise; words make the uncommon common.”

― Iain McGilchrist

model understand

“The model we choose to use to understand something determines what we find.”

― Iain McGilchrist

meaning engagement world abstract contemplation

“Meaning emerges from engagement with the world, not from abstract contemplation of it.”

― Iain McGilchrist

emotion body engage world

“Emotion is inseparable from the body in which it is felt, and emotion is also the basis for our engagement with the world.”

― Iain McGilchrist

left hemisphere right

“So the left hemisphere needs certainty and needs to be right. The right hemisphere makes it possible to hold several ambiguous possibilities in suspension together without premature closure on one outcome.”

― Iain McGilchrist

metaphor language world

“Metaphor is the crucial aspect of language whereby it retains its connectedness to the world"

― Iain McGilchrist

music narrative experience life time

“Music – like narrative, like the experience of our lives as we live them – unfolds in time.”

― Iain McGilchrist

thinking language world

“So thinking is prior to language. What language contributes is to firm up certain particular ways of seeing the world and give fixity to them. This has its good side, and its bad. It aids consistency of reference over time and space. But it can also exert a restrictive force on what and how we think. It represents a more fixed version of the world: it shapes, rather than grounds, our thinking.”

― Iain McGilchrist

lrft hemisphere truth internal coherence reality

“the left hemisphere sees truth as internal coherence of the system, not correspondence with the reality we experience.”

― Iain McGilchrist

language conceal thought gesture disclose

“If language was given to men to conceal their thoughts, then gesture's purpose was to disclose them."

― Iain McGilchrist

brain bits module dynamic

“the brain is often described as if it were composed of bits – ‘modules’ – of one kind or another, which have then to be strung together, it is in fact a single, integrated, highly dynamic system. Events anywhere in the brain are connected to, and potentially have consequences for, other regions, which may respond to, propagate, enhance or develop that initial event, or alternatively redress it in some way, inhibit it, or strive to re-establish equilibrium.”

― Iain McGilchrist

urbanisation globalisation local culture mental illness

"Over recent years, urbanisation, globalisation and the destruction of local cultures has led to a rise in the prevalence of mental illness in the developing world."

― Iain McGilchrist

socialism capitalism materialism lifeless matter

"Socialism and capitalism are both essentially materialist, just different ways of approaching the lifeless world of matter and deciding how to share the spoils."

― Iain McGilchrist

world consciousness given bring attention

"We bring about a world in consciousness that is partly what is given, and partly what we bring, something that comes into being through this particular conjunction and no other. And the key to this is the kind of attention we pay to the world."

― Iain McGilchrist