The patient correctly chose a picture of chicken and a shovel. When he was asked to explain his choices, he said, “I saw a claw and I picked the chicken and you have to clean out the chicken shed with the shovel.”¹³ This example demonstrates the subtle but effective role of the right hemisphere in our perceptions. It also suggests the origin of our intuitions.

One might say the relationship between the two hemispheres in forming our perceptions is a complementary one. For example, while the left brain interprets verbal and material means of communications, the right mind senses something beyond. It recognizes the emotions embedded in the conversation, and it can alert us about the sincerity behind the statements people express.

In the domain of awareness as well, one finds a complementary relationship between self and whole. At times we are so into ourselves that the outside world seems to grow pale. At other times, we almost forget ourselves as we drown in the totality of the universe. This complementary relationship is clearly a function of our brain. One may speculate that the two paradoxical states of reality mentioned above (the classical level and the quantum level) have nothing to do with actual reality out there. Perhaps the classical level is merely the product of the left brain. Studying the duality of brain hemisphere's function can shed light the issue of classic versus quantum level, the two asymmetric aspects of reality.

 

Interpretation of Wave-Particle Duality

 

Brain lateralization theory has the potential to offer answers for many paradoxes in understanding reality. As mentioned above, the dualistic wave-particle nature of matter is a great puzzle. Instead of struggling to find an external model for this dualistic nature, perhaps we should review our tool of perception itself. We mentioned earlier that the act of dividing and quantifying is a function of the left brain. In 1926, Max Born maintained that since the wave portion cannot be observed, it is not a real entity in classical terms. However, he asserted that we probably can find a classically recognizable particle in a region designated by square of the wave function. If the particle portion is merely an invention of our left hemisphere, then it is understandable that our brain would project it to the region where the energy is more concentrated. Energy is more intense as we get closer to the wave’s peak.

The nineteenth century post-modernist Edmund Husserl, like Jean-Paul Sartre and many other post-modernist philosophers, believed that mental objects have nothing to do with sensory perception and result instead from what the mind attends to, or intends. Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, claims, “All truths are evolving fictions that exist only in the subjective reality of single individual.”⁹ I suspect he is pointing to the perception of left brain, which is obtained by manipulating incoming data in order to portray a reality that conforms to preexisting beliefs and logic. Obviously, in the nineteenth century, the left brain–right brain dichotomy was not known, and in the absence of quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics and the classical level of reality was dominant. Therefore, when he talked about all truths, he meant the objective reality sketched by left brain.

Nietzsche’s statement denying the actuality of all truth does not seem acceptable.  Regardless of how much manipulation the left brain performs. If perception is based on incoming waves, it must have something to do with actual sensory stimuli out there.

 

State Reduction

 

As mentioned above, quantum mechanics describes the world in a superposition of all possible states. Although this is very difficult to comprehend, challenging one’s conventional wisdom, every related experiment proves the validity of this postulate. But we see the world in just one state. The puzzle of how we come to perceive one state (as seen at the classical level) out of the superposition of states (the simultaneous existence of all possible schemes and states, as predicted by quantum mechanics) is mind boggling. The bizarre antagonism between the classical and quantum mechanical aspects of reality is the question of the century.