Understanding The Matter with Things Dialogues Episode 23: Chapter 23 Flow and movement

This series of dialogues between Iain McGilchrist and Alex Gomez-Marin explores Iain's latest book The Matter with Things. In Episode 23 Iain and Alex discuss Chapter 23, Flow and movement

To purchase The Matter with Things

Dr Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception in flies, worms, mice, humans and robots. Since 2016 he is the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining high-resolution experiments, computational and theoretical biology, and continental philosophy, his latest research concentrates on real-life cognition and consciousness.

[dianecurran]

The dialogues between the two of you has grown into something magical. Just because you’re coming to the end of the current format of discussing chapters in the book doesn’t mean the dialogues cannot continue. I hope you find a way to continue the discussions. Beautiful, enlivening, inspiring, fascinating, informative, interesting, engaging, fun, delightful conversations. A wholehearted Thank You to the both of you.

[chrishughes]

You guys warm my heart every time I listen, thank you both!

[bearheart]

Can we take a moment to appreciate Alex Gomez-Marin. He’s such a great interlocutor with Dr Iain.

[druidjuicer]

Absolutely beautiful. The use of a wave to illustrate connectedness/ inseparability is so striking, the wave being discernible but not separate from literally anything else- from the influence of the moon to the molecular bonds in the water and so on to infinity and all things. At the moment of considering this I was immediately transported to an understanding of the ideas under discussion with both parts of my knowing fully engaged. Thank you both so much.

[shanokapadia]

Incredible.. words are not enough to thank you both. Delightful!
Absolutely Divine discussion.

[shanosantwanos]

The opening comments are outstanding..Iain is a brilliant man

[VermontStrolls]

Bravo, Bravo!!

And thanks a lot for all these conversations.

[dalibofurnell]

There's a surfspot in Germany, in Munich, called Eisbachwalle. It's in a river and the spot is just before a bridge and what helps the waves form is a very large log going across which is adjusted slightly to work with the current of the river in such a way that waves form. The surfers then take turns to jump in on their boards, already in stance, as it is not easy to paddle into the waves, you have to jump with your board and land in the pocket of the wave and it's incredible what techniques are used to be able to keep on riding this wave for longer periods of time. I hope it's still there, being used. I was last there quite a couple of years ago. Incredible ❤

[hannakatherine]

Please consider making a podcast or video on the philosophy of water 🌊 I would love to learn more.

[shanosantwanos]

This is a brilliant digest of knowledge and understanding..afterskools mcgilchrist episode featuring his banned tedtalk is brilliant also..afterskool..great channel..academy of ideas..even better channel..philosophy..quoting the giants endlessly..

[surfism]

Fab! This chapter deals with topics that I have also explored in my philosophy "Surfism: the fluid foundation of consciousness".

[montyoxymoron]

Great once again! The saying “It don’t mean a thing if it ‘ain’t got that swing” comes to mind and how modern pop music is spoilt by drum machines and all the other technology that fixes it to clock time (Music for robots?) Motion, flow, emotion it’s the “play” of all things: Lila “All the world is but a play, be thou the joyful player” (Incredible String Band)

[abcrane]

The vision of Dr. McGilchrist has become my own "theory of everything." Everything, in my life project focus, refers to the theory of everything economic, our educational models, our relationship with consumerism, with work, with art, with industry, with entertainment, with each other, and yes, even with revolution. All of these constructs have been contaminated and corrupted by the "overly symbolic mind" and fragmented consciousness that has come to negate any and all regard for the beautifully, healthfully functioning of the whole. This here is revolution! To return to a holistic world view underpins the restoration of all institutions to their most authentic empowering expressions. Thorstein Veblen got this ball rolling with his conspicuous consumption (consuming for the symbolic rewards of prestige), now it is time to bring the Institutional School of Economic Thought full throttle for a Veblen-Mcgilchrist synthesis. A life project for life.

[elioxman]

As a note, fluid dynamics is very different from thermal dynamics in such that the former is attempting to describe behavior of very realistic liquid whereas thermal dynamics is based on hypothesis of quasi-static processes, i.e. no dynamics whatsoever. Quite a peculiar terminology. ...Another "thing"(must be careful now) in that you guys are celebrating the amazement of a vortex and turbulence formation "in the water" as if you have a better idea what the "water" is than the vortex it is able to form. World is an amazing place for our very limited brains.... Thank for the good discussion once more.

[dougiedd]

I am struck by the relationship of this idea of resistance to the workings of Wittgenstein's method. How he used the inherent resistance of the limits of language to open up whole new ways of seeing the world...

[angelatakano]

I remembered I Gad to go a study of water, an essay for my physical chemistry class! I had already completely erased it from my mind!

[timjohnson]

At the end of the video, Iain critiques the view some hold that space and time are not real. I’m curious of the breadth of this critique; i.e. is it just panpsychism or does it include any views that argue space and time are emergent? In regards to emergence, I assume Iain takes the view that a table is real even though it emerges from its constituent atoms. And it would follow that space and time could be made up of more fundamental things (e.g. Nima Arkani-Hamed’s amplituhedrons), and Iain would view space and time as real. Makes sense. But…

What happens when you have an incorrect definition of the emergent thing? Newton had a view of space that was absolute. That space of Newton never existed in reality. In Newton’s day, someone correctly arguing that Newton’s space was not real or did not exist would have been critiqued by this view of Iain’s at the end of the video. We know General Relativity is wrong (“spacetime is doomed” as Nima says), and until we solve the measurement problem and unify QM and GR, it is most likely that no one has the correct definition of space or time. In that sense, I think you can easily argue that since all current views of space and time are wrong, space and time do not exist; just as we would say the space of Newton never existed. However, perhaps the views Iain is critiquing are saying no space and time can ever exist vs what I’m arguing here that we just don’t have the correct definitions of space and time and so they do not exist as currently defined.

[S.G.Wallner]

You both might find the presentations of "Fractal Aerodynamics, " by Felix Schaller very interesting.

[oakbellUK]

In considering things like a whirlpool (or candle flame, plant etc ) why do you not use the usual language associated with systems thinking? Like: emergent property, dissipative structure, complex system etc?
So much is already known about this which you don't seem to reference (maybe you do in the books?0

[abcrane]

"Grand Synthesis"

In your calculated reason, 

enjoy the spontaneous romance 

of sweet epiphany,

in your unbridled romance, 

employ the measured reason 

of its grandest symphony