In response to Scott Barry Kaufman’s article yesterday arguing the right-left brain hemisphere split isn’t true, the main proponent of the view, Iain McGilchrist, responds.

Scott Barry Kaufman would appear to be way behind the curve on the topic of hemisphere differences. It is true that there is a diminishing band of people – often life coaches and management seminar psychologists – who still go around mouthing the sort of nonsense with which he starts his article:

‘So yea, you know how the left brain is really realistic, analytical, practical, organized, and logical, and the right brain is so darn creative, passionate, sensual, tasteful, colourful, vivid, and poetic?’

This is, as should be obvious, a straw man, and underestimates his audience, most of whom can be assumed by now to have caught up with the vast increase in understanding of hemisphere differences in recent years.  It’s like lecturing us all on the news that physics no longer believes phlogiston to be the cause of fire.