Spherical Causation

Iain McGilchrist · All Souls College, Oxford · Psychiatry & philosophy

Mapping to the Nexus

McGilchrist advocates "spherical causation" — a holistic, non-linear interdependency operating simultaneously across the scales of an organism. This is central to bioelectric pattern control, which treats the organism as an integrated, non-decomposable electrical network where causality flows top-down, bottom-up, and laterally at once.

Key themes

  • Causation as radiating in all directions, not linear chains
  • Wholes and contexts constraining their parts
  • Hemispheric modes of attention shaping what we can see
  • Concepts covered (Platonic Space glossary)

  • Spherical Causation
  • Formal Causality