Ralston College welcomes critically acclaimed author Dr Iain McGilchrist to lead second annual public lecture series
News 16th March 2024
Celebrated scholar, public intellectual, and author of several critically acclaimed books, Dr Iain McGilchrist, was the feature speaker of Ralston College’s second series of annual Sophia Lectures, this year held on three consecutive evenings beginning March 13th in Savannah.
Drawing on his most recent work, two monumental volumes on The Matter of Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, and on his years of experience as a neuroscience researcher, Dr McGilchrist’s lectures explored how society can flourish by bridging modes of thinking which he associates with the left and right hemispheres of the brain. These are the sorts of questions Dr McGilchrist regularly considers on his popular online platform Channel McGilchrist.
Stephen Blackwood, founding President of Ralston College, introduced Dr McGilchrist, whose interviews on the College’s podcast are among its most popular, to more than 450 guests who over three evenings attended the free lectures at Soho South on West Liberty Street.
“Dr McGilchrist is one of the world’s most profound and inspiring thinkers. His ability to combine science and philosophy to explore the most difficult and demanding questions about the human condition is truly unique. His wide-ranging body of work demonstrates the remarkable results that emerge when a rigorous immersion in the humanities is combined with deep knowledge of the physical sciences,” Dr Blackwood said.
“Dr McGilchrist’s wonderfully multi-disciplinary career demonstrates that range need not preclude rigor. This conviction also underpins Ralston College’s own curriculum: our MA in the Humanities is ambitious in scope, covering several disciplines, three thousand years of cultural production, and multiple languages, and yet the students approach this broad range with rigorous focus and in forensic detail.”
The College was delighted to welcome so many local Savannah residents as well as many guests who traveled from out-of-state, that for the final lecture, additional seats were added.
At the end of the series, Dr McGilchrist shared with the audience his hopefulness for institutions such as Ralston College.
“Now I just want to end with a few words, because people often say to me, ‘you’ve certainly expounded a view about the hemispheres, how they differ, and how importantly we’ve lost the vision of the right hemisphere.’
“And, that's true: We’re left with only the somewhat inferior vision of the left hemisphere, useful as it is, but only something that will feed our greed and our lust for power. So, what are we to do?
“It's a very good question. And there are some very mundane answers to it. But I want to think about this at a higher level. First of all, how small really are we? If you have love, how great is it? The lover says, my love is as broad as the sky, is as deep as the oceans. How broad is that? How big is that? It’s no good saying, well it’s actually very tiny because it is: it’s huge.”
Pointing to his mind, Dr McGilchrist continued: “And the task of change begins in here. No change has ever happened in the history of humankind which has not come from changes in here. So, we need to begin changing the way we think, each one of us individually.
“And, we can start, not tomorrow, but tonight, by exercising a vision that I hope I have partially laid out before you, and hope to have inspired you by.
“But we also need something out there, and what is that? The answer is, I think, Ralston College. I mean that because we desperately need to get back to a broad, deep understanding of the world in which we’re situated, which we’ve been given as a pure gift. We don’t know why or how, but we have. And it’s our responsibility to understand it, to look after it. to nourish it, to help it grow, not to destroy it. And we can't do that without some help.
“And some of that help must come from institutions that in the past were often monasteries, were centers of learning as well as religion and now our communities that have set out to rediscover what it is we’ve lost.
“And I believe that Ralston, the brainchild of Stephen Blackwood and his friends, is an incredible step along that path. I want to see it flourish and grow, and I want to see other institutions springing up here in America and across Europe, particularly because we need it more than in the East, but also in the world of the East.
“So, thank you for coming tonight. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for supporting Ralston College. And thank you to Stephen for inviting me here and hosting me so beautifully.”
The Sophia Lectures launched in Spring 2023 to honor a founding tenet of the College: to share the riches of humanistic inquiry with everyone, everywhere.
In its first year, guests enjoyed five lectures by notable Cambridge University Professor Douglas Hedley examining the spirit of play.
Dr McGilchrist’s 2024 Sophia Lectures will be posted later this year.