The Fox and the Hedgehog and the Two Hemispheres of the Brain

In 1951, Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay about War and Peace and gave it a room-emptying title: “Leo Tolstoy’s Historical Skepticism.” Berlin’s publisher loved the essay but hated the headline, so he changed the title to something catchier: “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” after an ancient Greek adage, “The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

The retitled essay helped make Berlin famous. And the concept provides a useful way of illuminating a fourth difference between the two sides of our brain. The left side is a fox; the right side is a hedgehog. “In general the left…