The God of the Left Hemisphere

This is an important new scholarly study bringing together the work of Blake, Iain McGilchrist and the well-known TED presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor about her stroke, which has been viewed by more than 9 million people. He compares Blake's Urizen, the epitome of analytical reasoning power and design, as a complex of activities and values, 'all rooted in a shared interconnection, combining language, linear sequencing, moral codes, lawmaking, conceptual abstraction, powerful ego-centre, and instrumental rationality itself.' As Iain has pointed out, the left hemisphere is not only a partial and limited view, but positively suppresses the significance of the right hemisphere in a self-justifying and self-referential manner; Tweedy shares Iain's vision of an integration of both rational and imaginative modes of attention and identifies 'a return of the right hemisphere'. This contrasts with the 'single vision' of Blake and the mistaking of mechanistic abstraction for reality itself. He draws interesting comparisons between the rational structures of mediaeval religion and Enlightenment rationalism, and also retells the story of Galileo as taking the dogmatism of the earlier system of thought and importing it into the literalism of science. He also makes it clear how the same operating system is concerned with manipulation and the drive towards dominion and power, whether Divine or human. It would be interesting to know how much of Blake's knowledge of the brain was derived from Swedenborg, one of the first scientists to posit laterality of function. The book adds considerably to our understanding of the history of our dominant way of thinking and shows how it needs to be complemented and placed in a wider context.