From Robert J. Sawyer, sci fi author extraordinaire. This sort of thing is really worth a listen. I'll be there if time and tide allow, so you might get a chance to see me in the zoom-space. Or not. Anyway:
"I'm hosting this workshop at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study in Germany; if you'd like to join us by Zoom (either to participate or just watch), send me an email at [email protected] (don't just reply here).
WORKSHOP: THE BICAMERAL MIND AT 50
Monday, May 11, 2026
9:00 a.m. to noon Eastern Time (North America)
3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Central European Time (Germany)
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of JULIAN JAYNES's 1976 bestseller THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND. Jaynes proposed that prior to about 3,000 years ago, humans lacked truly introspective consciousness, with the left cerebral hemisphere during times of stress misinterpreting thoughts from the right hemisphere as compulsory commands from the gods.
Meanwhile, seventeen years ago, IAIN MCGILCHRIST published THE MASTER AND HIS EMISSARY: THE DIVIDED BRAIN AND THE MAKING OF THE WESTERN WORLD (2009, expanded edition 2018), and five years ago, he followed up with his massive two-volume THE MATTER WITH THINGS: OUR BRAINS, OUR DELUSIONS AND THE UNMAKING OF THE WORLD. In both works, he argues that the left hemisphere has currently arrogated to itself duties better performed by the right, and that alternating periods of respective hemispheric dominance shaped civilization.
The theories of both Jaynes (a psychologist who taught at Princeton) and McGilchrist (a psychiatrist who taught at Oxford) centre on the primacy of one cerebral hemisphere over the other -- but their theories are mutually contradictory.
In this free-wheeling three-hour workshop, we'll discuss the status of Jaynes's and McGilchrist's theories and other notions arising from split-brain research. The event will be led by HWK writer-in-residence ROBERT J. SAWYER, who will begin by presenting a brief introduction to Jaynes's and McGilchrist's ideas and then open the floor for group discussion.
Joining us by Zoom from New York will be the world's foremost Jaynes scholar (and Jaynes's grad student at Princeton), DR. BRIAN J. MCVEIGH.
No advance familiarity with the subject matter is required.
A member of the JULIAN JAYNES SOCIETY, Rob Sawyer delivered a plenary keynote address introduced by philosopher DAVID CHALMERS at the 2010 TOWARD A SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS CONFERENCE in Arizona. He has frequently explored ideas about consciousness in his science-fiction novels, and his current writing project at the HWK takes inspiration from both Jaynes (thesis) and McGilchrist (antithesis), seeking a synthesis of them both. Sawyer's fellowship at the HWK is under the "Fiction Meets Science" writer-in-residence program, which is part of the Brain & Mind research area."
