The Matter With Things - Book Discussion Group

For this event on the book The Matter with Things, we will discuss about chapter 9, What schizophrenia and autism can tell us. This chapter looks at what happens when the right hemisphere's contribution to understanding the world is neglected. McGilchrist argues that although both schizophrenia and autism are not merely a result of a right hemisphere deficit syndrome, they do have remarkably comparable phenomenology. Later in the chapter, Louis Sass' book Madness and Modernism is examined in relation to whether modernity simulates a hemispheric imbalance, something McGilchrist had suggested in his previous book The Master and his Emissary.

For this event on the book The Matter with Things, we will discuss about chapters 10 and 11, which look at what is truth and science's claims on truth.
For Chapter 10, we will examine how each of the hemisphere's would see the nature of truth itself. McGilchrist argues that the left hemisphere would see it as a thing; whereas in contrast, the right hemisphere would see it as a process.
Then with Chapter 11, McGilchrist makes the point that all knowledge is contextual and contingent, and that it is important to validate science's attempt to respond as fairly and fully to the reality with which it engages. Moreover, McGilchrist wants to emphasise that science's advance requires imagination (more associated with the right hemisphere); and not merely the stolid adherence to procedure (more associated with the left hemisphere).