Brain lateralisation: why bring it up?
In another thread, we talked briefly about misuse of the concept of left-right brain function lateralisation, which pop psychology tends to boil down to “left=analytical, right=intuitive”. This is often invoked by opponents of science, as in the example I quoted written by an astrologer: Purposefully crashing something into the moon just to watch what happens is akin to a schoolboy cutting up a live frog to see what makes it jump. It is an example of the domination of the left-brained rational scientific approach over the intuitive. This is fairly typical. I’ve often seen pieces which praise “right-brain creativity”, written by proponents of the paranormal. What puzzles me about this is what purpose this “neuromyth” (thanks, LB) serves in this context. If you want to say “science over-emphasises rational thought and neglects intuition”, or a blunt “intuition and faith are better at arriving at the truth than analytical thinking”, what exactly is added by mentioning brain hemispheres? I
