In this blog post, we will look at the reasons why humans try to interpret the world through the narrative forms of myths and science, and the cognitive structures and nature behind them.
We humans are animals that analyze causal relationships. The question “Why?” has been an important question in human history. Questions such as “Why do lightning and storms hurt us?”, “Why isn’t it raining?”, and “Why do people die?” may have been prompted by the fear of humans trying to survive in the harsh nature of early civilization. At first, they created a religion. God was the source of nature that humans could not understand and was at the center of destruction. Humans believed that God’s wrath and anger were the cause of natural disasters such as droughts and floods, and they offered sacrifices to God and prayed by building altars. Myths and scriptures were written, and they became the way humans interpreted and accepted the world.
This way of interpreting is also found in the academic world. In ancient Greece, people tried to understand natural phenomena in a more logical way. They discussed what nature was made of and what the most basic elements were, and gradually this discussion expanded to include social analysis and discussions of war and nation. In China, too, various thinkers criticized the violent conditions of the times and proposed solutions, making it an essential task to “understand” and “interpret” society.
Myths and religions are found all over the world, with only a difference in degree. Analysis and interpretation that excludes gods, as well as understanding of society and the state, also appear in different cultures. In this way, it is a universal phenomenon that humans try to analyze phenomena and uncover causal relationships in any way, and it can be seen as a natural human characteristic. As for the question of where this nature comes from, I would say that it is directly related to our brains. Since our language and thoughts occur in the brain, the way the brain understands the world and the way humans understand the world within structures such as society are bound to be similar. To this end, it is necessary to look at studies that analyze how the brain perceives the world.
As most people know, our brain is divided into compartments. The largest of these is the cerebrum, which is made up of two hemispheres: the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. Between these two hemispheres is an area called the corpus callosum, which is a network of countless nerve cells. The corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres and contains many nerve cells, so it is responsible for the exchange of information in the brain. Since signals that usually access the brain through the spinal cord pass through the pons and the thalamus of the midbrain, they reach both hemispheres relatively evenly even if they do not pass through the corpus callosum. The two hemispheres of the brain are connected to the midbrain, allowing them to exchange relevant information, but this is not the case for information that is transmitted through the corpus callosum, such as visual information. Visual stimuli are a prime example of such information. When the corpus callosum is resected, the left brain cannot see objects in the left visual field, and the right brain cannot recognize objects in the right visual field. In this respect, the corpus callosum is a very important region for the exchange of information.
There are people who have undergone surgery to cut the corpus callosum. This is called a corpus callosotomy, and it has been shown to alleviate the symptoms of epilepsy. This is a natural result considering the function of the corpus callosum, as epilepsy is a disease caused by abnormal signal transmission in a localized area of the brain or throughout the entire brain. This surgery was able to alleviate the symptoms of patients suffering from unpredictable seizures. This was possible because the function of the corpus callosum was not clearly known at the time. The patients who underwent the surgery lived surprisingly without much difficulty in their daily lives, and it was Dr. Roger Sperry who began to study them. Through his research, he proved “lateralization,” in which the two hemispheres of the brain specialize in different roles. This solidified the universality that had been indirectly confirmed through the linguistic disorders caused by left-brain damage. Afterwards, Dr. Michael Gazzaniga discovered the “interpreting left brain” along with the aspects of universality by utilizing various methods.
In Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of The Mind, Dr. Gazzaniga presented a paper with specific instructions to a patient with split brain (abbreviated as P.S.) in his left field of vision. For example, if the instruction was to “stand up,” the P.S. naturally stood up. However, when the patient was asked why he stood up, he gave an absurd answer, such as “I was going to get a Coke.” Even though he acted according to the instructions, he tried to justify his actions without recognizing the instructions.
Dr. Gazzaniga uses the “simultaneous concept task” in his research on split brains with Dr. Joseph E. Ledoux. According to this research, two different pictures are presented to patients with split brains in both hemispheres. Because different visual information is presented to different eyes, the patient’s left eye cannot recognize information from the right visual field, and the right brain cannot recognize information from the left visual field. For example, if a snow-covered road is presented to P.S.’s left visual field and chicken feet are presented to her right visual field, the shovel and chicken are selected as the appropriate association as a result of the associative thinking. In fact, the patient chose a shovel with his left hand and a picture of a chicken with his right hand. Then the experimenter asked the patient with the split brain why he chose that picture. He answered that he chose the chicken because it had chicken feet, but he explained that he chose the shovel because he needed it to clean the chicken coop. This shows that the patient was unable to comment on visual information transmitted to the right hemisphere and tried to explain his actions as logically as possible with the information he knew.
Through this experiment, Dr. Gazani interprets that the left and right brains cannot exchange visual information when the corpus callosum is resected, and that the choices of the right brain and the left brain do not understand each other. The part of the brain that is mainly responsible for language is located in the left brain, so only the information perceived by the left brain can be expressed in language. Therefore, P.S. could tell why he chose a chicken, but he had no choice but to state that he chose a shovel, which was not true. Dr. Gazzani concludes from this that the left brain tends to interpret phenomena and situations by solely responsible for language functions.
Separate brain studies have shown that the left and right hemispheres of the brain play a certain role in dividing the work, and in particular, the left brain plays a very important role in language and logical and causal reasoning. The right brain can also recognize things and process information, but information consisting of spoken or visual symbols originates in the left brain. Another point to note here is the “excuse” of the left brain. Kagan stated that the left brain tries to explain the patient’s choices as logically as possible in Cognitive Neuroscience. In other words, the left brain approaches phenomena from an interpretative and analytical perspective, and sees the trait of humans to think rationally as originating from the left brain. In other words, explaining phenomena that we cannot understand is deeply related to our cognitive structure.
When there is a gap between reality and understanding, we create and structure stories in our own way. This characteristic of the left brain gave rise to ancient myths and folktales, and we understood the world through those stories. Attempts to transform and modify myths and to understand nature and society at a higher level emerged as philosophy. Even in the modern era, this structure remains in the worldview dominated by science. For example, we view the formation and change of biological and chemical reactions as a grand narrative with atoms and elementary particles as the “protagonists.” In this grand narrative, the laws of physics take the place of God, and everything that particles do exists as a single narrative and “hero.” It is still our human instinct to try to understand the world through such grand narratives, even if the structure of the narrative limits our view.
