Whole-brain Half-wittedness

The left-brain/right-brain myth just won't go away. The psychologist, Laurence Miller, coined the phrase "whole-brain half-wittedness" and it's a good description. I, and many others, have been debunking the myth in education, business and other domains for many years. We have not had much success. Where did the myth originate and why is it so difficult to bust?

The idea that (Western) education neglected half the brain (usually the right hemisphere) and that the whole brain needed to be activated, did not find its origin in Nobelist Roger Sperry's 1950/60's split brain research, as is commonly believed. In 1985, psychologist Lauren Julius Harris wrote in a book chapter entitled "Teaching the right brain: Historical perspective on a contemporary educational fad.", that these ideas found their origin in Victorian times. Prejudice agains left-handedness (sinistrality) led to the educational ideal of ambidexterity in order to promote two-brainedness. Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement, was one of the supporters of the ambidexterity movement - in order to get more effective soldiers.

Why, if these ideas are so old and so thoroughly debunked (see for instance this chapter from The Throwing Madonna), do they just keep on going? There are of many reasons of course. The idea of a dual brain with a division of function along the lines of popular dichotomies (i.e. rational vs. intuitive, male vs. female, sequential vs. simultaneous) seems elegant and appealing - a scientific solution worthy of Occam's Razor. It is so intuitively plausible and on the face of it, based on science, that quacks find it easy to market any product based on it.

Another reason may lie in the nature of the training or therapy franchises that promote whole -brain half-wittery. They are often what I would like to call inbred granfalloons. A granfalloon is a group of people, often hierarchically organised, that associate around a meaningless, fabricated premise. The granfalloon would be established by the leader (or guru) and members would be limited to approved training and literature. The guru may be well aware that his or her product is nonsense, but the faithful followers or practitioners are kept in the dark. The quaint American expression "mushroomed - kept in the dark and fed manure", seems appropriate.

Occam's Donkey???

Why Occam's Donkey? Well, it's my combination of Occam's Razor and a composite of a number of different donkeys in philosophy, literature and film - Shrek's Donkey, Buridan's ass and Benjamin from George Orwell's novel Animal Farm.

Occam's Razor is the well known scientific rule of thumb that holds that "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." There is of course much more to it than that and the Wikipedia link above is a good place to start (it is instructive in Wikipedia to also look at the discussion pages). William of Occam (or Ockham) was the 14th-century English Franciscan friar and philosopher upon whose views the razor was based.

My composite donkey will ask sceptical questions (Benjamin), including "... are we there yet?" (Shrek's Donkey), but hopefully not irrationally "die" of hunger, caught between two haystacks (Buridan's ass).

Occam's Donkey will mainly be about three ideas - critical thinking, evidence supported practice and busting bullshit. These ideas will be explored within widely different domains, including education, medicine and associated fields, business, sport and the military.

The South African paediatrician and poet, C. Louis Leipoldt, at that time the editor of the South African Medical Journal, wrote in July of 1927:

"Nowhere perhaps is the public so ill educated concerning quackery as in South Africa. Our chief cities are honeycombed with faddists, sects and denominations, and the countryside still welters in original ignorance, superimposed on a stratum of bigotry and prejudice.”

He also decried the “... gross stupidity of legislators who are fit representatives of a public that delights in quackery.”

In South Africa, and it seems the same in the rest of the world, little has changed in the 80 years since these words were written by Leipoldt. In fact, I believe that the situation is often worse now than then.

I know that Occam's Donkey will be one of hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs that propose critical thinking, good science and rational discource as solutions to Leipoldt's problem. The rhetorical question will often arise, however: "Are we there yet?"