Iain McGilchrist - The Good, The Beautiful and The True

In this two-day event at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, Dr Iain McGilchrist will explore The Good, The Beautiful and The True.

With an increasingly exclusive reliance on the left hemispheric way of being in the world, to the exclusion of the more intelligent and insightful way of being of the right hemisphere, our modern age fails to understand the concepts of the good, the beautiful and the true, and takes them to be ancient ideals that are now irrelevant – or even meaningless.

Across two days of lectures and reflection, a panel discussion, and audience Q&As (in-person only), Dr McGilchrist will argue that we dismiss the good, the beautiful and the true at our peril: their intrinsic nature is woven into the very fabric of the cosmos itself.

He has invited guest speakers, writer, mythographer and Christian thinker, Dr Martin Shaw, philosopher and specialist in the ancient Greek world and author of Why Plato Matters Now Professor Angie Hobbs, cosmologist, healer, futurist and author Dr Jude Currivan, and director of the Scientific and Medical Network David Lorimer, to share their views.

Please note:

• In-person, seats are not numbered, just defined by area. Seats are on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Online livestream ticket holders will not be able to submit live questions during the event.
• All ticket holders will receive a recording of the event around 1 month after the event has taken place.
• Refund policy: In the event of cancellation no refunds can be given after 11th April 2026.

Schedule - please note some times may change slightly

Saturday 2nd May 2026

9.15am Doors open

9.45am Final entry

10.00am – 10.15am Welcome from David Lorimer

10.15am – Dr Iain McGilchrist lecture 1 –  ‘The Value of Value’

11.00am – Audience Q&A

11.15am – 11.20 am – Pause for writing / reflection for audience (remain seated)

11.25am – Professor Angie Hobbs – ‘Platonic Proportions: Beauty, Harmony and a Good Life’

Beauty is of central importance throughout Plato’s works.  In this talk, Angie Hobbs discusses the role of harmony in Plato and considers how, when internalised in the psyche, it equates to virtue, mental health and flourishing.  She argues that Plato’s thinking on proportion and harmony has its roots in the Pythagorean application of mathematics to musical theory and the cosmos as a whole, and shows how Plato develops their work and extends it to the human psyche and society, emphasising the vital importance of aesthetic education and early immersion in physical beauty.

12.10pm – Audience Q&A

12.25pm – Lunch break / pause for writing / reflection

2.25pm – Return to venue by this time

2.30pm – David Lorimer – ‘Embodying and Enacting Love, Wisdom and Truth’

In the teaching of the Bulgarian sage Peter Deunov (Beinsa Douno, 1864-1944), Love, Wisdom and Truth are characterised as fundamental principles, with two further ones making the pentagram of five: Justice and Goodness (Virtue). Deunov stressed that these universal principles are not divisive belief systems, but have to be understood and applied. He further explained that Love brings Life, Wisdom brings Light, and Truth brings Freedom. They correspond respectively to the cultivation of the heart, the mind, and the will. He embodied these principles in his sacred dance movements Paneurhythmy, which he choreographed, and for which he composed the music. The musicians stand in the middle of a circle of dancers, and the exercise as a whole represents the harmonious collaboration of humanity, connecting us to the Earth, the Heavens, and to each other. The principles also give us a compass direction for the co-creation of a future culture of Love, Wisdom, Truth, Justice, and Goodness. This is our collective task.

3.15pm – Pause for writing / reflection

3.20pm - Dr Martin Shaw – 'Mythic Reality And The Arising Of Value'

In his lecture Dr Martin Shaw draws on myth, nature and religious liturgy as component elements in the arising of value. Not as an arid set of laws, but repeated immersion in the numinous powers of beauty. From Christian and folkloric traditions, Shaw gives examples of how such repeated exposure can contribute to cultural traditions that raise up what is most merciful and creative in the human condition. 

4.05 – 4.20pm – Audience Q&A

4.25pm – Book signing

5.30pm – Vacate

Sunday 3rd May 2026

9.15am Doors open

9.45am Final entry

10am – 10.15am David Lorimer – reflections from previous day run through outline for day

10.20am – Dr Jude Currivan – ‘How the Unitive Science of a Living Universe Embodies Beauty, Truth and Goodness’

Scientific discoveries at all scales and across numerous fields of research are turning the old paradigm of a mechanistic Universe, on its head. Instead, the evidence is revealing that our essentially living Universe meaningfully exists and purposefully evolves, from simplicity to diversity, complexity and individuated self-awareness.

This emergent new understanding converging with universal wisdom teachings, invites us to re-member that Beauty, Truth and Goodness are embodied in its foundational nature.

11.05am – Audience Q&A

11.20am – 11.25 am – Pause for writing / reflection for audience (remain seated)

11.25am – Dr Iain McGilchrist lecture 2 – ‘So How Do We Remake the World (Because We Can)?'

12.10pm – Audience Q&A

12.25pm – Lunch break / pause for writing / reflection

2.25pm – Return to venue by this time

2.30pm – Panel discussion and audience Q&A

4.30pm – Book signing

5.30pm – Vacate

About the guest speakers:

Professor Angie Hobbs gained a First Class Honours Degree in Classics and a PhD in Ancient Philosophy at New Hall (now Murray Edwards College), University of Cambridge. After a Research Fellowship at Christ’s College, Cambridge, she moved to the Philosophy Department of the University of Warwick; in 2012 she was appointed Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a position created for her and the first of its kind in the U.K. (and, as far as can be ascertained, the world). Her chief interests are in ancient philosophy and literature, and in ethics and political theory from classical thought to the present, and she has published widely in these areas, including Plato and the Hero (Cambridge University Press). Her most recent publication for a general audience is Why Plato Matters Now (Bloomsbury 2025); she also narrated the audiobook. She contributes regularly to radio and TV programmes and other media (including 27 appearances on BBC Radio 4 In Our Time); she lectures and gives talks around the world. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Athens Democracy Forum, the Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the United States Air Force Training Academy in Colorado. She has been the guest on Desert Island Discs, Private Passions and Test Match Special. She was a judge of the Man Booker International Prize 2019 and was on the World Economic Forum Global Future Council 2018-9 for Values, Ethics and Innovation. Find out more here.

David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a visionary polymath, spiritual activist and poet, who is Founder of Character Education Scotland, Global Ambassador of the Scientific and Medical Network. He has also been editor of Paradigm Explorer since 1986. He was the instigator of the Beyond the Brain conference series in 1995 and has co-ordinated the Mystics and Scientists conferences every year since the late 1980s.

He is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Radical Prince on the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales (now King Charles III). His most recent publications are his essays, A Quest for Wisdom (2021), his collection of poems Better Light a Candle (2022), Spiritual Awakenings (2022, edited with Marjorie Woollacott), The Great Upshift (2023, edited with Ervin Laszlo), and The Playful Universe (2024, edited with Marjorie Woollacott and Gary Schwartz). David is also Chair of the Galileo Commission which seeks the widen science beyond a materialistic world view. He hosts a podcast Imaginal Inspirations with key thinkers in consciousness studies. He is a Creative Member of the Club of Budapest, and a Member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle.

Dr Martin Shaw is a New York Times bestselling author, mythographer, and thinker. He is Visiting Scholar at the Divinity Faculty of Cambridge University and Fellow of the Temenos Academy. Author of seventeen books, including Bardskull, A Branch From The Lightning Tree, and Smoke Hole, Shaw’s work weaves myth, folklore, and rites of passage. He is director of the Westcountry School of Myth and founder of the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life courses at Stanford University. Shaw is a respected storyteller and translator of Celtic and Lorca poetry. Following a 101-day vigil in a Dartmoor forest, he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and continues to write and teach nearby. Find out more here.

Dr Jude Currivan is a cosmologist, planetary healer, futurist, award-winning author and film maker, Evolutionary Leaders Circle council member, Associate Member of the Club of Rome and previously a senior UK-based international business woman. She has a Masters in Physics from the University of Oxford and PhD in Archaeology from the University of Reading in the UK and is a life-long researcher into the unitive nature of reality. Having travelled to over 80 countries, since 1998 she has been in service to collective and planetary healing and conscious evolution and co-founded WholeWorld-View in 2017 to further serve transformational change. 

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