"..our very attitude towards other humans, toward society, and toward reality itself is severely distorted through the holding of incompatible worldviews, of which either one or both are incorrect. Decision making in all fields of endevour is affected.
A unifying mind-brain theory, a theory acceptable to science and the humanities and religion, must be the center point of a unifying worldview, one able to eliminate the war of worldviews within as well as without.
Not only would unifying contradictory belief systems lead to peace among human beings by providing agreed-upon basic assumptions about which a meaningful debate could occur; it would also lead to peace within human beings - and through this inner peace would emerge a more rational approach to the problems themselves." Erdmann,E.,& Stover,D.,(1991) "Beyond A World Divided - Human values in the Brain-Mind Science of Roger Sperry" Shambhala.
Recent research has enabled the development of a reasonably refined description of the primary function of the neo-cortex; that part of the brain that is well-developed in humans.
Overall, the brain processes information in the form of wholes and their aspects. Roger Sperry's work on the linking of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, pioneered the research into this area.
These wholes and aspects are presented to the brain either in a serial or in a parrallel manner.
Despite subtle cultural differences, with the overall processing of information in wholes and their aspects we can break down the latter into three 'types':
(1) Static relationships - like that of the diameter of a circle to it's circumference.
(2) Dynamic relationships - like the Earth going around the Sun.
(3) Removable aspects - these we call 'parts', but they are wholes in their own right and thus will appear so but at different levels of analysis. Context thus determines whether a whole is an aspect of another whole or else 'a whole'. For example, if I an studying a whole and make it the context and then shift levels to study the aspects I will see the wholes of that level in the form of aspects - particles in the form of waves etc.(harmonics of the whole)
The cultural differences stem from education and thus intent. If I believe that something is aspectual rather than 'whole' then that is how the information will be treated - irrespective of the 'facts'. This ability has neurological roots based on the apparent hierarchic structuring of wholes and aspects by the brain.
Serial presentation is where we build a whole; the aspects come before the whole. This is the currently prefered manner of communication through the use of language, in spoken and written form. This has a strong auditory bias, but is also the way we deal with visual symbols that are ment to be interpreted as parts of a communication (e.g. ASL).
Parrallel presentation is where we 'gestalt' a whole and then analyse the aspects. This has a strong visual bias, but is also the way we deal with sounds we do not consider as parts of a serial communcation - e.g. yells, squicks, etc. Note that intent has an influence. If I believe something to be a whole then I will treat it with a parrallel-processing bias. This is often the case when people are presented with words spoken in a foreign language - suggesting that the more distant one's understanding of the foreign language, to the extent of not even recognizing the sound as a word, the more 'wholistic' one will treat the sound.
The infant brain is a whole-biased, sensory-integrated, but 'raw', system. As a result, the infant, when presented with a sense-specific stimulus will more often respond 'wholistically' with their whole being turning towards the stimulus. (e.g. see Stein & Meredith's (1993)"Merging of the Senses". Some parts of which are quoted in this site's link on Synaesthesia)
Environmental pressure, in the form of casual and formal education as well as direct family communications, leads to the differentiation of the senses. Eventually infants learn that they can respond to a specific sense stimulus either wholistically or partially, the latter where, for example, they can listen and talk to someone behind them whilst visually concentrating on something entirely different.
Although wholes/aspects processing appears 'global', the brain seems to have developed a degree of lateral bias in the form of the hemispheres of the neo-cortex. The degree of bias seems to be based on the degree of differentiation, but basically the left hemisphere is biased to processing data serially, and the the right hemisphere is biased to processing data in parrallel. By the nature of wholes and their aspects, this gives the left hemisphere an aspectual bias, since they come first, and the right hemisphere a wholistic bias. These biases are in the form of taking the lead in information processing, but a high degree of plasticity exists in early age such that one hemisphere can take-on the functions of the other if the other is removed. This plasticity seems to diminish with age and is also influenced by hardware (neurological), firmware(hormonal), and software(nurture) characteristics.Cross-cultural studies suggest that the dominant method of communication will determine the overall structure of the brain for later life. A degree of neuron 'culling' occurs after about 10-12 years as the child approaches puberty and it is therefore important that the initial years are as stimulating as possible, since the rule seems to be 'if you dont use it, you lose it'. At the same time, however, one must be wary of trying too much since this can lead to adverse results - like trying to learn how to ride a bicycle and read a book at the same time; eventually it will be 'done', but the degree of 'depth' could be weak due to the adaption of having to do both tasks at the same time; especially since they have to share, at least, visual skills. Better to develop one and then the other and then the combination.
Once an adult, one can still 'learn', but skills not learnt in one's youth, or advanced skills dependent on basic skills, can become difficult to learn and retain without continuous practice. (or an ever-present accent).
The longer the exposure to the environment, so the education system takes more of the developmental load that then (hopefully) leads to a path of re-integration, where the refined aspects (senses) are brought together to make a refined whole. This often does not happen these days; probably due to the lack of understanding of the characteristics of wholes. Science is so aspects-biased that the emphasis is on aspects first and thus the serial 'building' of wholes. The problem with this is that if you drop-out anywhere you end-up with concepts that are only partially completed. The 'old' systems taught the 'raw' whole first (often by rote and with little 'meaning') and then went through a process of aspectual refinement. This allowed for people to drop-out but retain an understanding of the wholes - if a bit 'rough' - there was always completion, just a lack of refinement.
Research suggests that the processing of wholes and their aspects is a neurological process (consider the dendrite(aspects)/axon(whole) structure of information processing by neurons and that a group of axons serve as aspects for other neurons). At the psychological level we create maps to differentiate wholes from each other as well as from their aspects, suggesting that all methods of description and categorisation are metaphors for whole/aspects processing.
This becomes more obvious when, by reducing information to wholes/aspects, we find that a pattern emerges when we analyse the methods used to make the metaphors. This pattern shows that, irrespective of the metaphor, the manner of generic description is the same.
This description, as it becomes more refined, leads to the emergence of specific emotion-related states and we find a template on which all metaphor seems to be founded. This template appears to be the root of all 'meaning' within all dichotomously-derived systems of categorisation and thus all 'meaning' is only valid within this context; even that of Science. We also find that the most globally accepted form of symbolic representation is Mathematics - which has it's roots in dichotomisation.
In summary, the brain processes information as wholes and aspects. The information is presented in either a serial or parrallel form, with the added suggestion that this is rooted in the mixing of primarily auditory and visual properties making an abstract 'sense' - the sense of dichotomy. With this 'sense' we create metaphors to help differentiate the many wholes and their aspects and as a result of this a 'template' of 'meaning' emerges that is shared by all dichotomously-derived systems of categorisation. This template makes the forming of analogies across disciplines very easy; perhaps at times too easy in that we can end-up confusing map (metaphor) with territory - which seems to be the case with the more esoteric disciplines (I Ching, Astrology etc), in that these metaphorically rich categorisation systems are taken too literally - as territory rather than maps.
It is the demonstrating of the whole/aspects characteristics within the I Ching that is delt with in some of the other links at this site for it is this system of categorisation that is strongly dichotomous in structure and has formed part of the foundation of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese thought for over 5000 years.
As this site demonstrates, whoever wrote the I Ching had a good understanding of dichotomous analysis but the richness was lost over the centuries and it became a 'divining' system. The 'meanings' we get from the I Ching are in fact the resonance of the template - which is how so many have 'seen' the universe, mathematics, physics, etc etc etc within the I Ching; all of these share the common ground of the template - the foundation of 'meaning' in wholes/aspects differentiation and emergent from the brain.