It’s a common belief that each of us is either left-brained or right-brained. That is, we are disposed better to either logic or creativity. Well. Neurologically, this is simply untrue. In 1961, Roger Sperry discovered that each hemisphere takes primary responsibility for certain functions; the left half calculated and formed language, and the right half was responsible for spatial reasoning. In the alchemy of pop psychology, these functions were transmuted into logic and creativity. And, before long, they followed the notion that one of these sides assumes dominance. Some of us are simply doomed to failing math while others are forever confined to drawing stick figures. In 2013, a group of scientists finally showed – using an fMRI – that in performance of different mental tasks, both halves of the patients’ brains were generally equally involved.
Humans have a natural tendency to categorize. This phenomenon is the manifestation of our pattern recognition abilities, and, for the most part, it’s a healthy one. However, here we create a false category. I think it indicates a problematic perception of learning. This myth is rooted in the fundamental difference between math/science and non-science. In math, there is one answer, the truth is known. This certainty comforts many, including myself. The aura surrounding math is seen as cold and calculating, impersonal and formulaic. On the other hand, in non-science, there is no singular, objective truth. Instead, it exists subjectively, always open to interpretation. Non-science is seen as warm and fluid, food for the soul. There is some truth to this distinction (see my article last week), but, on the whole, it is severely flawed.
Math demands immense creativity. Once equipped with a set of tools, it requires the imagination to arrange those tools in a novel way, or the ability to see a problem from a new perspective. Isaac Newton could very well have been the greatest genius who ever lived. He wasn’t simply a master of contemporary knowledge working ahead of everyone else. He was on an entirely different plane of thought. He wasn’t simply answering the questions everyone was thinking, but proposed wholly new questions that, rather than conforming their scope to present knowledge, completely changed our scientific vision. That’s what creative genius is. It is the incisive perception and open-mindedness to consider the unthinkable, which entirely reshapes how we view the world. Answering a question is easy; asking one is hard. But, because resources, the ultimate one being time, are finite, this genius also requires the restraint and prudence to know which questions not to ask, lest we find ourselves on a wild goose chase, frantically diving into every thicket of possibility, in search of a revolutionary theory. The goal of a liberal arts education can be summarized best as learning how to ask good questions.
The myth goes both ways. In non-science, we’re too accustomed to the idea that truth is personal, and we tend to recognize every comment as equally valid. But that’s not true. The worst comment in classes, often made for the sole sake of fulfilling the participation requirement, is, “I just wanted to say that, you know, I thought it was really interesting how the author said ______, and, um, yeah.” It’s just the most jejune remark. It doesn’t advance our pursuit of knowledge at all. Explore more deeply why that passage caught your attention, and why that is significant.
Why is it that a science kid can take a humanities class and do well, but the inverse isn’t true? Why do we advertise science classes made for non-science kids, like “rocks for jocks” but not the other way around? Part of the reason is that science is less accessible because its knowledge is hierarchical. But I suspect a big part is that science classes better teach students how to think than non-science classes do. In math, every step in the proof has to logically fit with the others. In non-science classes, we get too relaxed and allow some dissonance in our thoughts; our points don’t all fit in a logically stable whole. It’s possible to BS one’s way through a non-science essay. There is no BS-ing a math exam.
In our complacency with this discord, I see the source of another myth — the eureka, or “a-ha” moment. We hold out expectantly for that burst of brilliance. We think some people are just born geniuses, who have that je ne sais quoi. This romanticization of discovery makes for more interesting stories, but, as a matter of course, the truth is messier than that. The fatalism of believing that you either got it or you don’t dismisses the hard work that is necessary in creation or discovery. Scientists and poets don’t produce a new theory or chef d’oeuvre thanks to some dream or flash of revelation. On the contrary, intellectual achievement emerges from a collaborative process of accretion, one that involves years of humdrum, repetitive effort. Mark Zuckerberg, upon being asked to share the precise moment when he came up with Facebook, responded aptly, “I don’t think that’s how the world works.” Isaac Newton asserted, with uncharacteristic modesty, “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
We often hear praise for the liberal arts because of how they fuel the holistic devel- opment of a proper human being. Nevertheless, in such speech, I often hear overtones of the false division between logical math and creative humanities; we embrace the two as supplementary, yet implicitly independent, disciplines. We should steer clear of this fallacious thinking. “I’m a great believer in luck,” Thomas Jefferson quipped, “and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
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