I happened upon a wonderful interview recently with Scottish polymath Iain McGilchrist. So I was reading the free sample of his most well-known book, The Master and His Emissary, and while I find his thesis compelling and the prose beautifully written, I noticed two statements in the introduction that seem to me to be just flat-out incorrect. At one point he writes:
>It has been estimated that there are more connections within the human brain than there are particles in the known universe
Does he mean stars in the universe? Because particles in the usual sense (e.g. proton, electrons, etc) is just an absurd claim. Like, how could this be even remotely true?A few pages later, he says:
>The average temperatures in Iceland and Indonesia are clearly very different… But it is still true that the lowest average annual temperature in Indonesia is *lower* than the highest average annual temperature in Iceland – and of course the average temperature varies considerably from month to month, as well as, less predictably, from day to day…
I get what he’s trying to say, that average generalizations are useful even if there are still some counter-examples – but there’s no way this is true, right? Does he mean the lowest *recorded* temperature in Indonesia is higher than the highest recorded in Iceland?
These kind of look like red flags to me. Has anyone read this book (or his other work)? What are your opinions of McGilchrist? Thanks
by spacetime9
1 Comment
I’ve gotten about half way through it. To be honest I only half understand it. It seems he definitely mis-spoke about the particles and brain connections (he should have said stars) and I don’t know about the temperatures in Iceland. Because these were just two metaphors I didn’t pay too much attention to the metaphors themselves as I understood the points he was trying to illustrate.
I think the approach (if you’re interested) is to read the book and then read the criticisms. I think it’s been well reviewed but he does make bold claims. Even if he’s wrong about some of them, which no doubt he probably is, there’s lots learn about hemispheric difference. I knew nothing about the subject before reading, and the idea that society has become ‘process driven’ and obsessed with credentials does resonate with my own experience of working in large bureaucracies.