Concluding eirenic (and mostly “unscientific”) postscript

[Extract] Wesley Wildman reports, in the Introduction to this special issue of Religion, Brain, Behavior, of the highly enjoyable symposium at Villa Palazzola (on Lake Albani, outside Rome) in September 2014 which formed the original nucleus of this collection of critical and interactive papers on the thought of Iain McGilchrist. While the assembled company at that three-day meeting happily sipped delicious local wine under the cooling trees overlooking the lake (discoursing intensely all the while), it was already quite clear that “battle had commenced” as far as the philosophers’ and neuroscientists’ engagement with the rich and controversial work of Iain McGilchrist was concerned;1 but that was nothing new to McGilchrist, and he was ready for the fray. However, the discussion on that occasion was at the same time pressed creatively into new and challenging directions by insights from ethicists and theologians, including a number of monastic theological commentators;2 for we had set ourselves the task of thinking not only about McGilchrist’s prime theory on the lateral hemispheres of the brain, but more broadly about what such a theory might mean, in quite practical terms, for contemporary ethics, political theology, “religion,” and spiritual practice.