Laws of media 363 Cultural dominance by either the left or the right hemisphere is largely dependent upon environmental factors. The lineality of the left hemisphere is supported by an alphabet-based service environment of roads and transportation, and by logical or rational activities in social and legal administration. Dominance of the right hemisphere, however, depends upon a cultural milieu or environment of a simultaneous resonating character. Such dominance is normal in oral societies, and today our universal environment of simultaneous electric information has entirely subverted the dominance of the left hemisphere. By tuning in on the new audible-tactile awareness made available by our electric ground, Fritjof Capra found that modern physics was, unwittingly, retrieving a world-view harmonious with ancient Eastern wisdom. His problems in reconciling the two were entirely those of the hemispheres: I had gone through a long training in theoretical physics and had done several years of research. At the same time, I had become very interested in Eastern mysticism and had begun to see the parallels to modern physics. I was particularly attracted to the puzzling aspects of Zen, which reminded me of the puzzles in quantum theory. At first, however, relating the two was a purely intellectual exercise. To overcome the gap between rational, analytical thinking and the meditation experience of mystical truth, was, and still is, very difficult for me. (The Tao of Physics, 9–10) The alphabet created visual space, and with it a lineal and visual “outer world” environment of services and experiences (everything from architecture and highways to representational art), which contributed to the ascendancy or dominance of the left, or lineal, hemisphere. This observation is consistent with the findings of the Russian neurophysiologist A.K.Luria, who found that the area of the brain which controls linear sequencing, and, hence, mathematical and scientific thinking, is located in the pre-frontal region of the left hemisphere: “The mental process for writing a word entails still another specialization: putting the letters in the proper sequence to form the word. Lashley discovered many years ago that sequential analysis involved a zone of the brain different from that employed for spatial analysis. In the course of our extensive studies we have located the region responsible for sequential analysis in the anterior regions of the left hemisphere” (“The Functional Organization of the Brain,” 71–2). Luria’s results show that the expression “linear thinking” is not merely a figure of speech, but a mode of activity peculiar to the left hemisphere of the brain. His results support the observation that the use of the alphabet, with its emphasis on linear