The Matter With Things Quotes

“A large body of studies documents that unconscious ‘processing’ of emotional ‘information’ goes on mainly in subcortical regions of the right hemisphere, and that unconscious emotional memories are stored in the right hemisphere.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

“It is arguable that ugliness came into human life only with affluence. In fact, I'd venture to say that there are few artefacts or buildings that we know of prior to 1830 that would be generally considered ugly.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World

“Opposites are not to be resolved by eliminating the one we happen to dislike, any more than lopping off the south end of a bar magnet gets rid of the south pole: it just shortens the magnet.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

“Hormesis’, according to one group of experts, ‘is fundamental to evolution and highly generalizable.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

“Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree which is supposed to grow to a proud height could do without bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, whether any kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible?”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

“The idea of complementarity is foundational in Nature. So, for example, to turn one’s back on the parts (the workings of the left hemisphere) and accept only the whole (the work of the right hemisphere) is not to ‘get back to wholeness’, because the whole is never an annihilation, but rather a subsumption, of the parts. The true whole exists precisely in this relationship, the tension between parts and an apparent whole.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

“French call, suggestively, a cliché). The more precise anything is, the less content it has: ‘the more certain our knowledge the less we know.’ The”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

“The work of art exists precisely to get beyond representation, to presence, even if that presence is itself composed of words, as it is in poetry. If this were not so, a lot of effort could have been spared, as it could all have been better stated in prose. The work of art does not hide, represent, or body forth something else, that must therefore be decoded: it is precisely what it is. And yet neither is it opaque, as though we were stopped at its frontiers. It is semi-transparent, translucent: we see it all right, and yet see through it to something beyond.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

“It is fair to say that, though the main deficits incurred by damage to the left hemisphere are in the twin important areas of the use of language and of the right hand, the world itself usually remains recognisable, and mainly, though not always wholly, undisturbed. That is because the right hemisphere is functioning as normal. Things are very different when the damage is in the right hemisphere, and the subject is more – or wholly – dependent on the left. When those who care for left hemisphere stroke patients were asked to specify the most important problem encountered, they named difficulty writing or spelling; by contrast, when those who care for right hemisphere stroke patients were asked, it was loss of empathy. Almost half of carers for those with right hemisphere stroke reported as among the most important problems a whole range of cognitive and emotional impairments, as well as alterations to personality. Not one of the carers for left hemisphere stroke sufferers did so.4 For those with right hemisphere damage, they and their world had changed. For those with left hemisphere damage, they and their world were recognisably the same: it was their ability to handle it, to make use of it, that had altered. As we have seen, the foundational difference between the hemispheres lies in the way they attend – and how you attend changes the world. It also changes you, the one who is doing the attending. Since it is of such consummate importance, let’s take a closer look at attention from a hemisphere point of view.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

“It is. . .undisputed by neuropsychologists and philosophers that the type, and extent, of attention we pay changes the nature of the world that we experience.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World

“Attention is not just another cognitive function. Attention is how our world comes into being for us. The altered nature of attention can appear to abolish parts of the world, collapse time and space [and] eviscerate emotion. . .It is a profoundly moral act.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World

“This finding is remarkable in a number of ways that have not always been appreciated. To begin with, it illustrates that attention is involved primarily not with seeing in itself, but – as far as the left hemisphere is concerned – with the bringing into being of the world, seen or unseen. We can see without attending and we can attend in the absence of sight.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World