Deep Metaphysical Assumptions

I find many of Iain McGilchrist’s deep metaphysical assumptions wonderfully resonant, but not all. Let’s explore!

What are McGilchrist’s deep metaphysical assumptions?

McGilchrist says:

I’ve really always been philosophically minded. There were a number of things that occurred to me and seemed terribly important… These were things like that:
[1] The whole is never the same as the sum of the parts…
[2] The world was…a deeply responsive vibrant living reverberative experience… It was a two-way process…
[3] Opposites often seem to coincide… The further you push…, the more you approach the very thing you’re fleeing from…
[4] History, generally, seemed to move in spirals, not in a sort of linear trajectory…
[5] The general tendency of the analytic mind…was to take things, abstract them, decontextualize them, and render them no longer unique and alive…¹

I agree with 1, 2, and 5 above. Maybe 4? An example of 3, when opposites coincide, would be helpful.

McGilchrist says:

The mathematical equations for flow … might be an instance of a kind of chaos that is … the coming together of order with disorder. … I’m always saying we need division and we need union. … We need to bring these two apparently opposite points of view together. We need union and division, but we need…the union of them, not the division of them…²

David Bohm suggested there is no disorder.³ This changes the perspective!

Maybe thinking in opposites introduces dualisms where there are none?

McGilchrist says:

People say, oh, you’re creating a duality, but I’m not creating a duality. Nature has given us a duality. … And it’s about, as so many things are, about both division and union. It’s about connection and distinction. So it’s not an absolute thing.⁴

Really, we are wholes!

Notes:
1. McGilchrist has had these assumptions since he was 13–14 years old. See Perspectiva, “Attention as a moral Act: Iain McGilchrist & Jonathan Rowson in Conversation”, 20230306, YouTube Video, 1:36:55, https://youtu.be/YHUGuUhB1c4?feature=shared&t=561
2. Rebel Wisdon, “Jordan Peterson and I’, Iain McGilchrist (Part 2 of 2)”, 20181218, YouTube Video, 27:34 https://youtu.be/uN0HKAJHHzA?feature=shared&t=343
3. David Bohm & F. David Peat, Science, Order, and Creativity (Routledge Classics, 2011), p. 122
4. The Best of Worlds, “Wisdom, Delusion, Consciousness & the Divine Dr Iain McGilchrist EP 436”, 20240505, YouTube Video, 1:49:34 https://youtu.be/HWBs_p194T4?feature=shared&t=255