Notes

1. See my “Evolutionary Perspectives on Purpose and ManZygon  8 (1973):325–40, for a further discussion of purpose.
2. S.Washburn and S. C. Strum, “Concluding Comments,” in Perspective on Human Evolution, ed. S. Washburn and P. J. Dolhinow (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972), 2:469–70.
3. Of course, one could question whether the same science that stands behind modern technology could ever hope to recognize those nontechnical qualities of human thinking which do not conform to these cognitive styles demanded by science and technology. However, to do so in one sense would be to deny that people who use and practice science are human, since in general all humans, including scientists, are likely to have theses. In fact, given the high probability of variation in cognitive styles in any human population, there is every reason to believe that this variation could be explained scientifically. To have variation, we would only have to assume that one population would have more practitioners of one style of thought than another but that most human populations have some who can think in terms compatible with the sym bolic information codes used for complex technology.
4. This brief review attempts to avoid all but the essential information on the problem of hemispherical asymmetries. Much more extensive reviews of the evidence can he found in the works of J. E. Bogen (“The Other Side of the Brain: An Appositional Mind,” in The Nature of Human Consciousness, ed. R. Ornstein [New York: Viking Press, 19731, pp. 101–25; J. E. Bogen and G. M. Bogen, “The Other Side of the Brain 111: The Corpus Callosum and Creativity,” Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Societies 34 [1969]: 191–220; and n. 7 below).
5. This universality of speech and the left hemisphere is not complete. Numerous studies, including those of J. Levy (“Psychobiological Implications of Bilateral Asymmetry,” in Hemisphere Function in the Human Brain, ed. S. Dimond and J. G. Beaumont [London: Paul Elek, Ltd., 1974], pp. 121–83), indicate that there are individuals with right‐hemisphere speech in a small hut significant portion, approximately 40 percent of left‐handed individuals, of any population. However, this is further complicated by the fact that H. Hecaen and J. de Ajuriaguerra (Left Handedness: Manual Supperiority and Cerebral Dominance, trans. Eric Ponder [New York: Grove & Stratton, 19641) have re ported that, as a population, left‐handed individuals have a higher incidence of early hemispherical brain damage (presumably at birth) which causes an early switching over of speech to the other hemisphere. In addition, such switching over can occur with some decrease in efficiency any time from birth to pubescence but usually not after this period, although it is important to mention that left‐handed individuals have at any age a better prognosis for recovery from brain injuries influencing speech than the right‐ handed. A. Gessell and L. B. Ames (“The Development of Handedness,” Journal of Genetic Psychology 70 [1947]: 155–75) have reported a significant correlation between right tonic neck reflex in premature babies (seven months) and handedness at ten years. Elsewhere, N. Geschwind (“Cerebral Dominance and Anatomic Asymmetries,” New England Journal of Medicine 287 [1972]: 194–97) has reported clear neuroanatomic differences in brain symmetry favoring the left hemisphere for speech at birth. In general, Levy concludes from this kind of evidence that the capacity for speech asymmetries has a strong genetic component favoring right‐handed motor control and left‐hemisphere speech control. This leaves a small population of individuals with a recessive genetic predisposition toward left‐handedness and right‐hemispheric speech. Finally, it is also important to mention that this crossover between left‐hemisphere speech and right‐handedness, and vice versa, does not always occur, since crossed aphasias are reported (see Levy) where an individual can be right‐handed and have the right hemisphere for speech.
6. N.Geschwind, “Disconnection Syndromes in Animals and Man,” Brain  88 (1965): 237–94, and n. 5 above.
7. R. W. Sperry, M. S. Gazzaniga, and J. E. Bogen, “Interhemispheric Relationships: The Neocortical Commissures; Syndromes of Hemisphere Disconnection,” in Handbook of Clinical Neurology, ed. P. J. Vinken and G. W. Bruyn (New York: American Elsevier Publishing Co. 1969), 4:273–90.
8. Preliminary experimental results by an investigator at the University of Pennsylvauia indicate that alcohol selectively affects the left hemisphere functions more than the right, allowing right hemisphere functions to predominate. As an interesting experiment, it is hypothesized that motor control of writing is mirror‐imaged through the corpus callosum on the right hemisphere. Hence, under the appropriate conditions most of us arc capable, without any previous training, of picking up two pencils and simultaneously writing simple words and sentences forward with the right hand and backwards with the left. This may be especially true after having a few cocktails–alcohol apparently disinhibits our right hemisphere (J. Levy, personal communication, 1974)
9. More specifically, the next time you are involved in analyzing a problem and are writing, observe what you are doing with your left hand! Alternatively, watch an artist use his or her left hand in the carrying out of his or her work.
10. See Eugene G. d'Aquili and Charles Laughlin, Jr., “The Biopsychological Determinants of Religious Ritual Behavior,” this issue; Laughlin and d'Aquili, Biogenetic Structuralism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).
11. H. Shapero, “The Musical Mind,” in The Creative Process, ed. Brewster Ghiselin (New York: Mentor Books, 1952), pp. 51–52; see also T. G. Beuer and R. J. Chiarello, “Cerebral Dominance in Musicians and Nonmusicians,” Science 185 (1974): 537–39.
12. Robert Assagioli, Psychosynthesis A Manual of Principles and Techniques (New York: Viking Press, 1971).
13. Robert Hertz, “The Preeminence of the Right Hand: A Study in Religious Polarity,” in Right and Left, ed. and trans. Rodney Needham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). p. 31.
14. Jerome Bruner, On knowing: Essays for the Left Hand (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 2–4.
15. Recently, for example, two graduate students and 1 (Solomon H. Katz, M. Hediger, and L. Valleroy, “Maize Processing Techniques in the New World” Science 184 [1974]: 765–73) had occasion to analyze the nutritional significance of a particular cooking practice used in the preparation of maize. There was biochemical evidence that such a practice would significantly enhance the nutritional value of a maize diet to the point where it could support most of a population's nutritional needs. Of course, we also knew that maize was the key dietary constituent behind the rise of the great Mesoamerican civilizations; this meant there was sufficient time for some kind of optimum Actaptation to be made for this diet. While it was obviously clear that such scientific evidence as that stemming from biochemistry could not have existed, we hypothesized that this knowledge had important survival value and was probably gained by a process of trial and error and that, once gained, was so successful that it became a permanent part of a culture. Furthermore, by relating the level of consumption and production to the presence or absence of this technique, we were able to demonstrate a nearly perfect relationship between heavy dependence on maize and the practice of this particular cooking technique. It was so significant that we suggested that this technique was a critical limit for the full development of maize agriculture.
16. Hertz (n. 13 above).
17. See n. 5 above.
18. Needham (n. 13 above).
19. J. Chelod, “A Contribution to the Problem of the Preeminence of the Right, Based upon Arabic Evidence in Right and Left” in Right and left, ed. Needham, p. 244.
20. These data and other information I have been able to collect provide us with a sample. Although small, and selected only on the basis of the recorded information on the problem, it is nevertheless an adequate enough sample to determine if there are important associations and patterns between the natural interpretation of right and left and what we have already learned from the experimental neurological studies. This is especially true if there is no reason to suspect in advance that the collection of these samples was biased to reflect a particular pattern. In addition, by taking all recorded examples, we are using a total ascertainment‐like approach that should also serve to help eliminate any bias in the sample. Of course, there is always the likelihood that they were all part of a few, broad cultural traditions (see R. Naroll, “Galton's Problem” in A Handbook of Method in Cultured Anthropology [Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1970], pp. 974–89). However, even this finding would be interesting because it would reflect the strong resistance of these traditions to any kind of change, even under the different ecological circumstances to which these populations reflecting the broad traditions were ultimately subjected. Even with these words of caution about sampling, we should caution further that at this very preliminary stage of investigation into the problem, the concepts which follow should not be construed as the products of statistically tested hypotheses‐rather, the results here should he viewed as a possible basis for further, more formal inquiry (Solomon H. Katz and D. Armstrong, “Neural Bases of Right‐Left Dual Classification Systems” [paper presented at the Symposium on Biogenetic Structuralism at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Mexico City, November 20, 1974]).
21. Hertz, p. 11.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., pp. 11–14.
24. Heinz A. Weischoff, “Concepts of Right and Left in African Cultures” in Right and Left, ed. Needham, p. 63; my italics.
25. Levy (n. 5 above).
26. KarlE. Peters, “The Image of God as a Model for Humanization,” Zygon  , 9 (1974): 116.
27. Ibid., p. 117; my italics.
28. J. R. Caroll, ed., Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Reading: of Benjamin Lee Whorf (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1951).
29. Katz et al. (n. 15 above); SolomonH. Katz and AnthonyF. C. Wallace, “An thropological Perspectives of Behavior and Disease,” American Journal of Publication  (November 1974), 105–53.
30. Hertz (n. 13 above).
31. In this regard it is interesting to note that, ordinarily, questions regarding heritability and environment can he answered by comparing identical and fraternal twins. Under the vast majority of circumstances identical twins who share the same genes are more alike than fraternal twins who share, like brothers and/or sisters, the same parents. However, in the case of handedness, identical twins are more often opposite handed than fraternal twins, making it impossible to calculate heritability. In a large twin study just carried out at our Growth Center we found by examining data only from identical twins, i.e., those who share identical genes and whose co‐twin wrote with the same hand in cases of either left‐left or right‐right, that they always demon strated a very high degree of similarity in a variety of psychological tests of perception and achievement. However, when the identical co‐twin was opposite handed right‐left or vice versa, there was a very significant difference between their psychological profiles. While these results require further analysis before their full meaning can he extensively interpreted, they nevertheless suggest the important effects of in uteroenvironment upon the development of handedness, since there was no reason to Suspect that these twins were purposefully trained after birth to assume these unusual differences.
32. R. E. Ornstein, The Psychology of Consciouness (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1972), p. 49.
33. Katz (n. 1 above).
34. SolomonH. Katz, “The Dehumanization and Rehumanization of Science and Society  ,” 9 (1974): 126–38.