Iain McGilchrist Quotes & Sayings

I trained in medicine after pursuing an academic career in the humanities, mainly because of my interest in the relationship between mind and body, and between mind and brain. — Iain McGilchrist

The truth, it is said, is rarely pure or simple, yet genetics can at times seem seductively transparent. — Iain McGilchrist

None of us actually lives as though there were no truth. Our problem is more with the notion of a single, unchanging truth.
The word 'true' suggest a relationship between things: being true to someone or something, truth as loyalty, or something that fits, as two surfaces may be said to be 'true.' It is related to 'trust,' and is fundamentally a matter of what one believes to be the case. The Latin word verum (true) is cognate with a Sanskrit word meaning to choose or believe: the option one chooses, the situation in which one places one's trust. Such a situation is not an absolute - it tells us not only about the chosen thing, but also about the chooser. It cannot be certain: it involves an act of faith and it involves being faithful to one's intentions. — Iain McGilchrist

Hunters and trackers learn not only to understand intellectually a bunch of facts about the animal they follow, but to feel their way into the very being of the animal. — Iain McGilchrist

The genome was once thought to be just the blueprint for a living organism, like a combination of the architect's plan for a building and the builder's list of supplies. It specified the parts, the building blocks, and, somehow, the design of the whole, the way in which they are to be put together. — Iain McGilchrist

The human genome contains so much data that, it has been calculated, it would fill 43 volumes of Webster's International Dictionary. — Iain McGilchrist

It is not rational to assume, without evidence, that rationality can disclose everything about the world, just because it can disclose some things. Our intuition in favour of rationality, where we are inclined to use it, is just that - an intuition. Reason is founded in intuition and ends in intuition, like a pair of massive bookends. — Iain McGilchrist

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

Attention may sound dull, but it is an essential aspect of consciousness. In fact, it governs what it is that we turn out to be conscious of, and therefore plays a part in the coming into being of whatever exists for us. — Iain McGilchrist

Perspective in art has receded along with harmony in music: We tend more and more to see the world as a heap of intrinsically meaningless fragments. — Iain McGilchrist

To understand something, whether we are aware of it or not, depends on choosing a model. We get to understand what we see by comparing it with something else, something that we think we understand better. But what we compare it with turns out to have a huge influence on the outcome. — Iain McGilchrist

The nature of creativity is to make space for things to happen ... We can drive it out with our busyness and plans. — Iain McGilchrist

We have 26,000 genes. But a blind, millimetre-long roundworm with only 959 cells in total already has over 19,000. — Iain McGilchrist

The imperial vastness of late Roman architecture was made possible by the invention of concrete. — Iain McGilchrist

In Shakespeare, unique individuals repudiate the stereotypes demanded by the structure of the play: Shylock commands our sympathy, Barnardine refuses to be hanged. Individuals trump the category. — Iain McGilchrist

Being uprooted from your own culture, provided you take with you the way of thinking and being that characterises the more integrated social culture from which you come, is not as disruptive to happiness and well-being as becoming part of a relatively fragmented culture. — Iain McGilchrist

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

The world appears rectilinear, but is in fact curvilinear - a literal truth in physics, and a metaphorical one in metaphysics. — Iain McGilchrist

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