On Monday the 8th of May, Ideasquare will be hosting a conversation with psychiatrist, philosopher and scholar Dr Iain McGilchrist. The session is organized in conjunction with Terraforming - a pilot program equipping students with big-scale systems thinking abilities and how to induce societal challenge.
The event aims to share an innovative and trans-disciplinary thesis addressing the nature of reality, from the perspective of the human brain and philosophy. It hopes to bring a fresh perspective to this topic, stimulating ideas and collective reflection on systemic change. Grounded in the epistemology that individual approaches are “fingers pointing to the moon”, it invites a range of thinkers and practitioners exploring metaphysical questions from the arts, humanities, sciences, or philosophical and spiritual paths.
This topic and approach are in line with cross-connectivity and innovative thinking embodied by IdeaSquare. The research, thoughts and opinions represented by Dr Iain McGilchrist are entirely his own and have no connection with CERN as such. The event is by invitation only.
Bio
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a former Oxford Fellow and psychiatrist, whose work spans the fields of neuroscience, epistemology, and metaphysics. His work is centred around an insight regarding a fundamental difference in our attention, stemming from the two hemispheres of the brain. He is a critic of reductive materialism, and holds that the mind and brain can only be understood in the broadest context. In his latest work, The Matter with Things, he examines the processes by which we make sense of the world and seek to appreciate what is “true”. Based on a wide body of science and philosophy, he explores different aspects of reality, including questions relating to the nature of space and matter, the existence of time, the role of flow and asymmetry, and the ontology of consciousness. He underlines the seeming paradoxes, polarities and tensions within these topics, and proposes a synthesis. Please find more information in the bio below. The following conversations between Dr McGilchrist and Dr Alex Gomez-Marin cover key chapters from his book that have relevance to this forum, including the Coincidence of Opposites, Time, Flow and Movement, Space and Matter, Matter and Consciousness.
