The Myth of “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”
Hello Fellow Arters and welcome back to Draw Daily!
Welcome to “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”. A series where I am going to be going through the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and here I am going to debunk the entire idea of “Right Brain Thinking.”
First Exercise
One of the projects I’ve been keeping on the back burner is going through the book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Dr. Betty Edwards. Dr. Edwards claims that learning how to draw doesn’t need to be hard or take a very long time, so the exercises in this book are of interest to me. There is one glaring flaw with this book however, and it is right there in the title “The Right Side of the Brain”. This book was initially published in 1979, but in subsequent years “right-brain” “left-brain” thinking has been wholly debunked.
What is the Right-Brained Left-Brained Theory?
Right Brain or Left Brain thinking was a theory that a person has a dominant hemisphere of their brain that primarily wins out and controls the way a person approaches and thinks about things in general; in both a literal and figurative way. To the point that each half of our brain has been aliquoted to having the ability of producing only one and not the other. If you are a literal person, one who is logical or analytical, you are a Left-Brained person; and if you are Right-Brained you are a figurative person who is more prone to be a creative or artistic type.
The idea filtered down and gained traction over many years due largely to misunderstandings and false equivalents done in both scientific studies and, apparently, as Dr Edwards does point out in her book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” social and linguistical biases held against ‘right-brain thinkers’. As we all know, the right side of our brains control the left side of our bodies, and the left side of our brains control the right side of our bodies. So, when language emphasizes arbitrary right or left handedness like “right hand man” is considered a person of significance, and a “left hand compliment” implies that the speaker thinks poorly of the recipient; we can imply that it is the right-side of the brain that is being looked down upon as the right side of our brains control the left hand.
I find colloquial evidence to be arbitrary and these meanings are symbolic in much the same way a five pointed start represents the stars we see at night, or how love is said to reside in the heart when we all know that all your heart does is move and pump blood. So, a more practical approach is to ignore linguistical evidences and look more closely at the scientific evidences.
What Does Science Say?
Let me start by sharing a video I found by Professor Dave on the subject that explains all of this way better than I ever could. I’ve researched this a bit but I am no expert. I’ve read articles, interviews, and whatever else I found, but this video is succinct and to the point. So, if you want to rely on someone who is much smarter than I am, you can just watch Professor Dave’s video instead of reading my drivel.
Evidence that a lot of people take for granted is that, in most cases, certain things do happen in certain parts of our brain. Things like math mostly happen in the left side of our brain meaning that the left side seems to be more logical, and because the right side of our brain does control the more fanciful things our brains are capable of, that you as a person, who has a bias towards one or the other are controlled more by that part of your brain. This is a false equivalence because we all use both the left and right sides of our brain equally.
We aren’t prone to ‘thinking more with one side of our brain than the other.’ Both sides of our brains can be used even when we are primarily thinking of something that is based in logic or creativity. Logical thinkers can be very creative people, coming up with ideas and concepts most can barely understand let alone prove. How else could we make major breakthroughs in sciences and math without creative thinking and workarounds? Conversely, creative people can approach creative things, like art, based in logic, and science and math to bring creative ideas to life. We are not our interests and we are fully functioning, well rounded humans capable of both logical and creative thinking all at the same time.
But There’s More Science!
Or is there? Obviously there are studies that have been done to help perpetuate this false thinking. One such case is seen in patients who have epilepsy where the preferred treatment was to sever the connections between the two halves of patients brains to help quell their symptoms. These poor people were then subsequently poked and prodded at due to the significance of their newly altered state and proved to be good subjects to test their theories and ideas on. This procedure prevented the two hemispheres of the brain from communicating seeming to segment one side of the brain for certain thinking. This brought about the belief that this was true for most people; But, there is one glaring flaw… most people have both sides of their brains working in tandem and are not two separate entities.
How this simple fact flew right over the heads of the researches, I do not know. If you disconnect any part of a person’s brain it is going to effect them significantly and it will no longer communicate with the rest of the brain. Thinking that this is relevant for people who have both sides of their brains working together, frankly baffles me. However, it is a great example of how one bad take can influence an entire populace, and how easy it is to perpetuate false ideas and a false tale can take on a life of its own. In this case it has paved a path for many young people who were brought up to believe they just were in capable of being creative, so what’s the point? Or people grew up believing that they would never have the ability to think critically?
FIN
Ultimately this sort of thinking has the potential to and, most likely, already has effected the trajectory of many lives. Continuing to reinforce these falsities can only serve to dissuade otherwise perfectly capable people. Students have chosen schools, trades, and careers based on the logic of this right and left brain theories pressed on them by teachers, councilors, and any adult, really. We have to be really careful with how we use science to influence the significant life choices we make throughout our lives, and should follow our passions and not some sort of personality test (which in and of themselves are also total hogwash.)
So if you have been told you are too logical or mathematical to be an artist, tell those influences in your life to, politely, shove off.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading!
I’m MK and this is Draw Daily!