| Abstract | [Introduction]
What we miss in Bradshaw & Nettleton’s (B & N’s) target article is an approach to the biological functions of hemispheric specialization. Questions of mechanism cannot, or should not, be separated from questions of phylogenetic origin. Indeed, B & N do seem to have the question of origin in mind when they refer to “...a possible prior mode” and to “...a more fundamental, antecedent mode of specialization.” But once they have characterized this mode as “analytic/holistic,” their brief fling with biology is at an end. Presumably, behavioral modes do not evolve without a behavior to support, but the authors give no indication of what this behavior might be. They do not even ask. And so their conclusion is trivial, scarcely more illuminating and of no more heuristic value than if, following the mythological lead of Nietzsche and Freud, they had assigned the left hemisphere to Apollo, the right to Dionysus. In short, the target article lacks both depth and scope. |
|---|
