26 Quotes by 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Socialism and capitalism are both essentially materialist, just different ways of approaching the lifeless world of matter and deciding how to share the spoils.

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.