My chum Huw (always a scourge of ill-read neurononsense) has pointed out this vicious review in New Scientist of a new book which drags out the old left brain/right brain silliness across human history
I like this summary:
"The fact is, hemispheric differences are not well understood. Neither are patterns over 2500 years of western history. Trying to explain the ill-understood latter with a caricature of the former does little to illuminate either."
My chum is even more trenchant:
"A nice ["tribute"?] to the 'I know a bit about neuroscience so would you like to pay a lot of money for my company that's drawn some erroneous conclusions" crowd"
So let's go easy out there with our received wisdom, shall we?