Iain McGilchrist, a leading psychiatrist and global thinker, brought a vast body of work and deep insight into how we think, why we think, who we are, and how we understand our place in the world. In his latest book The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, Iain posed urgent and unsettling questions. What was the world? How could we understand concepts such as consciousness, matter, space and time? Was the cosmos without purpose or value? And could we really afford to neglect the sacred and the divine?
Iain’s perspective challenged conventional thinking. He explored how different sides of the brain worked together to shape our emotions, our character and our sense of self. He was committed to the idea that the mind and brain could only be truly understood in the broadest context: not only our physical and spiritual existence, but also the wider human culture that shaped, and was shaped by, our brains and minds.
About Iain McGilchrist
A former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Iain was also an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He served as Consultant Emeritus at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital in London and held a research fellowship in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore. He also became a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch.
Iain lived on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of north-west Scotland, where he continued to write and lecture worldwide. His work had appeared in most major media outlets, and he had taken part in numerous radio and television programmes and documentaries, including the BBC’s The Moral Maze, Start the Week and Today.
About Humphrey Hawksley
Humphrey Hawksley, an award-winning author and journalist, hosted the weekly Goldster Magazine Show, where he interviewed prominent figures from the worlds of health, culture, travel and adventure. A long-serving BBC foreign correspondent, Humphrey reported on global crises with a particular focus on Asia, where he opened the BBC’s first television bureau in Beijing.
He also hosted the monthly Democracy Forum Debates, created the Rake Ozenna political thriller series, and authored Asian Waters: The Struggle over the Indo-Pacific and the Challenge to American Power. He lectured at institutions such as the RAND Corporation, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, and MENSA Cambridge.
Questions that drove the conversation included:
- Was the world essentially inert and mechanical, just a collection of things to be used?
- Were we ourselves simply the playthings of chance, caught in a struggle of all against all?
- Why were we engaged in destroying everything of value to us?
This live online event offered a rare opportunity to hear Iain McGilchrist and Humphrey Hawksley delve into these fundamental questions in a rich and thought-provoking dialogue.
