I am currently reading "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" by Iain McGilchrist. It provides a good overview of

I am currently reading "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" by Iain McGilchrist. It provides a good overview of current insight into the roles of the separate hemispheres of the brain (way beyond the usual hippy stuff). One of the distinctions made is that the left hemisphere creates "abstraction" and the right hemisphere works by using "examples". A good course in (pure) mathematics will emphasize both: understand the theorem but also consider these examples that demonstrate the theorem. Now it strikes me that this article by Gowers paints a deeper picture of this left/right brain divide in mathematics, and the tension between them that McGilchrist describes in his book. How remarkable.