divided brain

• Reggie Ray


• Loch Kelly


• Judith Blackstone


• My Somatic Reson

One way of looking at the difference would be to say that while the left hemisphere's raison d'être is to narrow things down to a certainty, the right hemisphere's is to open them up into possibility. In life we need both. In fact for practical purposes, narrowing things down to a certainty, so that we can grasp them, is more helpful. But it is als

The right hemisphere seems to be involved more with new experience, new events, things, ideas, words, skills or music, or whatever it may be, while they are still fresh, original and unique, and so to speak present, to the mind. The right hemisphere's world is present – or more precisely ‘presences’ to us, as Heidegger puts it. By contrast the left

As Pascal wrote, ‘The ultimate achievement of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it. It is indeed feeble if it can't get as far as understanding that.’

Some elegant research into gesture and speech reveals that thought begins and ends in the right hemisphere, passing through the necessary staging post of the left hemisphere, where it is put into serial sentences. This follows a typical pattern in the way the hemispheres relate: the origins and the end lie in the right hemisphere's world, but it is