Iain McGilchrist conveys in The Matter With Things the complexity, responsiveness, and purposiveness of living cells — let alone trillons of them acting together.1
Iain McGilchrist maintains that “life vastly enhances the degree of responsiveness of, to and within the world“.2 What life brings is the capacity for valuing. All living creatures are able to recognize value.
Values are not invented, but discovered and disclosed. Values declare themselves in the responses of living organisms to the world, and the world’s response to them.3
Valuing is depends on relationship. Iain McGilchrist sees value as intrinsic to the universe. One of the reasons for the evolution of life is life’s ability to respond to value, fulfilling its potential.4
Life can be seen as the very process of discovering and furthering the beauty, truth, and goodness of the universe. Both appreciating and (in an indivisible act) bringing them further into being.5
Notes:
1. Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things, p. 1635.
2. Ibid., p. 1722.
3. Ibid., p. 1723.
4. Ibid..
5. Ibid..
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