Right Hand, Left Hand: The origins of asymmetry in brains, atoms and cultures by Chris McManus, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Harvard, 拢20, ISBN 0297645978 Reviewed by Douglas Palmer
AS A cack-handed and somewhat gauche member of the sinister bastard brigade of lefties (we make up 20 per cent of the population), I sometimes resent the hegemony of the more adroit and dextrous right 鈥� and all those pejorative terms that are used for the left. We are not talking politics here but something much more fundamental, biological asymmetry.
All life, both plant and animal, shows some form of handedness at some structural level from the molecule right up to the human hand itself. DNA molecules, many inorganic crystals and anything with a spiral from mollusc shells to screws and spiral nebulae are 鈥渉anded鈥�. But does it matter? After all, right and left are relative to the viewer. Or is asymmetry an inherent property of matter?
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Right Hand, Left Hand by Chris McManus (an appropriate name 鈥� manus is the Latin for hand), an academic expert on handedness and founding editor of the journal Laterality, is a fascinating and immensely readable exploration of the whole topic.
McManus delves into the science behind this universal phenomenon and makes a good case for the linkage between the fundamental laws of physics (neutrinos are left-handed) and those of biology (DNA is right-handed). Even football gets a mention.