Dr Rupert Sheldrake and Dr Iain McGilchrist – In Dialogue. Saturday Morning – Beyond the Brain 2023

Rupert Sheldrake PhD is a biologist and author of more than 90 scientific papers and 9 books, and the co-author of 6 books. His books have been published in 28 languages. He was among the top 100 Global Thought Leaders for 2013, as ranked by the Duttweiler Institute, Zurich, Switzerland’s leading think tank. On ResearchGate, the largest scientific and academic online network, his RG score of 34.4 puts him among the top 7.5% of researchers, based on citations of his peer-reviewed publications. For ten years running he has been recognized as one of the ‘most spiritually influential living people in the world‘ by Watkins Mind Body Spirit magazine. His work has been featured in many magazines, newspapers and broadcast media, including New Scientist, The Guardian, Discover magazine, The Spectator, The Washington Post, Die Zeit and on BBC radio and television.

Since 1985, he has taught every year on courses at Schumacher College, in Devon, England, and has been part of the faculty for the MSc in Holistic Science programme since its inception in 1998. In 2000, he was the Steinbach Scholar in Residence at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. From 2003-2011, Visiting Professor and Academic Director of the Holistic Thinking Program at the Graduate Institute, Connecticut, USA. In 2005, Visiting Professor of Evolutionary Science at the Wisdom University, Oakland, California. From 2005-2010 he was the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge University. He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California, a Fellow of Schumacher College in Devon, England, and a Fellow of the Temenos Academy, London. He is an Honorary Member of the SMN.

Dr Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Consultant Emeritus of the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital, London, a former research Fellow in Neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore, and a former Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He now lives on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of North West Scotland, where he continues to write, and lectures worldwide.

His books include Against Criticism (Faber), The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale UP), The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning; Why Are We So Unhappy? (Yale UP), and Ways of Attending (Routledge).

His latest publication is the two-volume work, The Matter with Things which was published in November 2021 by Perspectiva Press. This is a sustained critique of reductive materialism, and concerns such questions as ‘Who are we? What is the world? What is the nature of time and space? What do we mean by purpose, value and the divine? And how do we most reliably set about finding out?’ He has also been commissioned by Oxford University Press to write a book of reflections on the humanities and sciences; and plans to write a critique of contemporary society and culture from the standpoint of neuropsychology, as well as a study of what is revealed by the paintings of subjects with psychotic illnesses. He is an Honorary Member of the SMN.