Greetings, Friendlies. :)
For some Dhamma folk, discussions of “brain hemispheres” and “neural algorithms” elicits an instant—perhaps bodily—contraction. The resistance seems to come from a belief that the richness of human experience, the sacredness of being, is being reduced to mere mechanism.
But that view is itself reductionist: “Either I must throw off the knowledge of neuroscience or I am lost to the wonder of experience”. This, too, is a binary—and like any binary, it traps us in confusion and misunderstanding, limits our emancipation from avijjā.
Philosophy begins and ends in wonder. Let me assure you that the same is true of its prodigal child, Science.
Iain McGilchrist [1] lays out the movement of human attending: we begin in the right hemisphere—open, embodied, contextual—then move to the left hemisphere—abstracted, decontextualized, atomic. Those who fear neuroscience believe that it is here, in the left hemisphere, that wisdom perishes.
But this first transition, from right to left, is not the end of the story. The new understanding, now deeper, more textured, can be folded back into the right hemisphere’s view. From facts and theories, we return to embodied, lived wisdom. Our understanding grows richer, more skillful; we understand something new about the world.
Neuroscience need not disenchant. If we are willing to recognize that resistance to science is a kind of bias, we might soften into appreciating the tools of the left hemisphere and allow them to do their work. Subsequent understanding, woven back into the right hemisphere, brings clearer, more grounded experience-ing. It is not the death of wisdom but its renewal.
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[1] The Master and His Emissary.
Dharma PhD 