Being left-handed has always been something of a mixed blessing. With it came the stigmas of age-old beliefs that it indicated a tendency to evil and criminal behavior (Left = Sinister, in medieval heraldry), while at the same time, left-handed people have been some of the greatest creative and scientific minds in various fields. So what does one have to do with the other?
Left-handed geniuses and notable people include Joan of Arc, the Pharaoh Ramses II, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Queen Victoria of England, author Lewis Caroll, novelist Mark Twain, and both Michaelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. It is not recorded whether any of these notable lefties came from especially creative or unusually intelligent parents. Nor is there a hereditary history of being left-handed in the Crowns of England.
A 1976 Canadian study, updated in 1992, confirmed the results of many other testings done in the 20th century: that the chances of being left-handed has little to do with genetics. When the father is left-handed, the chance of like offspring is one in ten. For mothers who are left-handed, the chances increase to two in ten. And if both parents are left-handed, the likelihood of left-handed children is still only four in ten, which means that right-handedness is still a very dominant trait.
What has emerged through scientific study over the years is a theory that those who are left-handed are utilizing more of the right side of their brain, the hemisphere that is also responsible for thought and perception. The enhanced activity here may in fact promote a person's ability to perceive things differently, and to incorporate more information when making a decision.
A 2004 study out of Vanguard University in Southern California is one of the more recent scientific papers to support this theory. In it, they determined that those who have a strong "mindedness," in other words, whose thinking and actions were dominated almost totally by one side of the brain, were more likely to have rigid and strong beliefs in the Biblical account of creation... in other words, "narrow-minded."
Theoretically then, most Biblical creationist believers should be right-handed, since lefthanded people are often "double-sided" to some degree, using both the left and right hemispheres of their brains. Supposedly, two-sided thinking allows for more pathways of thought, information gathering, and analysis of the results, and thus more "rational" behavior.
Well, I'm sorry to burst the bubble of the Vanguard profs, but I know from personal experience that their pet theory holds about as much water as a bucket made of cheap toilet paper.
With such dubious scientific thought being encouraged, it's not surprising that certain Medieval superstitions about left-handedness have survived. During my grade-school days, children were still getting their knuckles rapped by teachers for not using the "right" hand. To this day, my wife can write with either hand, thanks to her second-grade teacher. She also insists that she's the only one in the house "in her right mind," but that I'll believe.
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