A recent article in the Asheville Citizen-Times noted a bit of obscure scientific research. Scientists have discovered that the corpus callosum, a structure in the human brain, is much thicker in women than in men. The corpus callosum is a band of tissue that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
This finding, if true, would explain a lot of things I’ve been puzzling over. How different are men from women? What makes them different? Are the differences cultural or biological?
In recent decades, popular wisdom has tended more to the belief that the differences are not as great as previously thought, and that they are mostly sociological in nature. The feminist movement and affirmative action laws have taken full advantage of this new liberal attitude. The results have included rapidly increasing employment of women, the partial lifting of the glass ceiling, Title IX funding for female athletes, and even a female candidate for president. “Anything you can do, I can do better”—or just as well. While social equity has benefited, there was a price to be paid. Genders got blended, and it became politically incorrect to talk about differences.
Some popular books, such as Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, counter these trends. They give voice to what most people know intuitively: yes, differences exist. But how can we recognize this without turning back the clock? If nothing else, have we not at least learned that old-school patriarchy favors men at the expense of women?
Science also tells us that the average person uses only a small fraction of his or her brain capacity—typically 10% or so. We know too that the left hemisphere is used for logical and analytical tasks, while the right hemisphere is reserved for feelings and emotion. (This is a vast oversimplification of the complete story, of course.)
So who uses what? In other words, where is that 10% of active brain located? Are different people likely to allocate their 10% in different ways? In particular, is there a gender-based tendency to use certain parts of the brain more than others?
Traditional beliefs held that men were better at rational thought, while women relied more on intuition. This would imply that men prefer the left brain, and women the right brain.
(Please understand that when I refer to men or women as a class, I do not mean to imply that all men or women act a certain way. There are many men and women who are the exception to the rule. Alan Alda is the classic example of the sensitive male, while Madeleine Albright can be as hard-nosed as any man. I’m generalizing here and elsewhere only for the purpose of trying to understand patterns of statistical distribution.)
But the news about the corpus callosum makes me think there’s more to it than that. This structure links the two halves, and serves as a communication bridge between them. It has been called the brain’s ‘telephone exchange’. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of a larger corpus callosum?
A large link would serve to facilitate better communication between the hemispheres. It would allow you to make complete use of all of your faculties, regardless of where they were located. On the other hand, it might cause you to diffuse your abilities among too many things. You might not develop any one area to its full potential.
This seems to me to be a better model of actual real-world behavior. Men are often highly focused, extremely creative, ambitious, driven, and fearless. In contrast, women are better at communication, collaboration, and holistic thinking. They ‘know’ the answer without having to think about it, or even being able to explain how they know.
To draw the obvious conclusion, women—by virtue of their relatively thicker corpus callosum—inhabit the entire brain. Their 10% of active real estate is spread throughout both hemispheres. Men, however, tend to stay on the left side, and more fully develop their abilities there. Men live in the left brain.
So both sexes make full use of their 10%; they just use it in different ways. Neither is ‘smarter’ than the other. But the differences do cause men to generally be good at certain kinds of things, and women at others.
Men tend to think the way a computer does: linearly and procedurally. They define a goal, and proceed to try any and all methods of reaching it. Possible adverse consequences—including personal bodily harm or even death—are ignored. Challenges are exciting. “Why did I climb the mountain? Because it was there.” They are focused, determined, and clever.
Women do not usually ‘think’ in the traditional sense (that is, as men do). Though quite capable of it, they can transcend simple logic. Instead, they feel. They have a sixth sense about things. They have ‘common sense’. They relate well to stories and narratives. Their knowledge is acquired more from the real world than from books.
Men believe feelings are illogical, unpredictable, untrustworthy, and to be suppressed at all times. The exception is in matters of the heart. It is only here that they deem it appropriate, and allow themselves a rare luxury.
There are two whimsical definitions of experts. One holds that an expert is a person who doesn’t have to think. This seems counter-intuitive, but it’s true. The expert has been doing it for so long that it no longer requires conscious effort. A simple example is the typist: a good one gives no thought to the location of the different letters. The knowledge is all in her hands; words flow directly from the paper onto the screen.
Computer scientists have tried to capture the knowledge of experts, and encode them into computer programs. Such programs are called expert systems. Initially, expert systems made use of traditional techniques common to the science of artificial intelligence. These included long chains of rules and large databases. More recently, they have begun using fuzzy logic. This is an extension of standard binary logic, which has only two states: yes and no. Fuzzy logic also admits the possibility of other states, such as ‘maybe’ or ‘probably’.
Expert systems based on fuzzy logic have enjoyed commercial success in the mass market. They are used to control everything from car transmissions to washing machines. They can make real-time decisions about what gear to use, or how to best clean your clothes. The disadvantage is that they cannot tell you why they make those decisions. It’s just inherent in how they were built. They do things because it ‘feels’ right.
The other whimsical definition of an expert is someone who knows a great deal about very little. As he improves, he knows more and more about less and less. Eventually, he knows everything about nothing. Rocket scientists, marine biologists, gastroenterologists, and personal-injury lawyers all fit this definition.
These two definitions seem to fit the way women and men, respectively, approach problem solving.
As a man, I’ve struggled to understand women my entire life. They have always seemed mystical and inscrutable to me. Their reasons for doing things—when they give one—never make any sense. And they are very reluctant to engage in the detailed logical debates that I am so fond of. I will admit that my engineering education channeled me in this direction. In undergraduate school, debating was what we did for fun—when we were not watching Star Trek, of course.
These experiences initially led me to dismiss women as not being very smart. But my opinion has changed radically over the years. I have come to appreciate their intellectual abilities more than I would ever have thought. I now believe that, by and large, women are smarter than men. They are each smart in their own ways, of course. But women have the edge in the ways that matter in the real world.
I know that my corpus callosum will never be any bigger than it is right now. My telephone exchange is a small PBX, not a major city office. Even so, I’ve been trying to develop what little ability I have. I keep reaching out to my right brain. “Hello? Is anybody home?” Unfortunately, the answer usually comes back as “Go away! There’s nobody here but us chickens!”
Seriously though, I think both sexes would benefit from trying to develop unused portions of the brain. Biology is not always destiny. We may find it easier to do some things rather than others, but we can choose to do them however we want. We can acquire new techniques that tap into latent abilities, and allow us to solve problems in more appropriate and productive ways. In short, we can learn to be holistic or reductionistic as needed.
This kind of new thinking (or new feeling, as the case may be) will be increasingly required in our increasingly complex world. Technology has done an amazing job of providing us with an incredible variety of sophisticated goods and services. Unfortunately, it has also caused severe environmental problems: air and water pollution, global warming, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity. We will need much more holistic methods to solve these problems. Our present course is certainly not sustainable long-term, and may not even last the next century. The world as we know it could end in the lifetimes of our grandchildren.
It may be wishful thinking on my part, but perhaps we also use only 10% of the corpus callosum. If so, there may be hope for us yet.