![cover|150]() > [!summary] Progressive Summary # Structured Notes ## Definitions ## Chapter Summaries ### Introduction McGilchrist has a very interesting definition of a limit case: "what is essential to the phenomenon has in this case reached its minimum, without being actually extinguished." He uses this to subvert what we often think of as the norm, and suggests that this is often the limit case of the real phenomenon. Some examples: - Isolation is the limit case of interrelation. (Society often thinks of separation as the norm, and it takes extra effort to create relationships.) - Stasis is the limit case of motion. (Under Newton, stasis is the norm, and force has to be applied to set things in motion.) - The explicit in language is the limit case of the implicit. It is not more real than the implicit, but a narrowing of possibilities. - The literal is the limit case of the metaphorical, "in which the wealth of meaning is collapsed into a 1:1 correspondence for a useful, temporary, purpose." - Randomness is the limit case of order - Simplicity is the limit case of complexity. It is a simplified model of reality. (Instead, much reductive science says that simplicity is the norm, and complexity is built out of simple parts.) - The actual is a limit case of potential. "Potential is not simply all the things that never happened, a ghostly penumbra around the actual." - The determinate is the limit case of the indeterminate. - Straight lines are the limit case of curves. - The discontinuous is the limit case of the continuous. #### Bi-lateral Hemisphere Hypothesis In his previous book, The Master and the Emissary, McGilchrist attempted to answer 3 questions: - The two halves of the brain are asymmetrical. Why? - For an organ whose power depends on the number of connections it makes, why is there a sharp divide down the middle? - Why is the corpus callosum, the bridge between the 2 hemispheres, getting narrower over time? His answer is that the Left Brain evolved to have narrow and focused attention for the purpose of manipulation. The Right Brain evolved to have open, sustained attention for the pupose of understanding the whole. This balanced an organism's need to find food and protection, with the need to be aware of the larger environment that contained many unknowns. # Quotes # References Other books that relate to this theme: David Bentley Hart, *All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life*