Sergey Savelyev. Lecture: Calligraphy and the brain

2017年9月8日 下午6:00:00

Russian scientist, evolutionist, paleoneurologist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, professor, Head of the Nervous System Laboratory of the Institute of Human Morphology of Russian Academy of Sciences, author of the idea of cerebral sorting will tell about the impact calligraphy produces on human's brain and why children are best taught calligraphy.

This speech will talk about the role of writing and its graphic representation in brain evolution. As writing had become a source for abstract representation of images and its phonetic symbols, this phenomenon led to creation of the first extra-genome inheritance systems unrelated to any live information-carrying medium. Acquisition of objective ways to transfer knowledge and skills by the humanity has turned into an evolution tool. There emerged a need in people able to create, copy and develop the material culture of calligraphy, which led to the artificial selection of the brain. Specialized areas of the frontal lobe became a foundation for individual ability to writing, and being combined with well developed eye-hand coordination, to calligraphy too. This is why developing penmanship and calligraphy skills in children is one of the key pedagogical methods to differentiate specialized areas of the brain. Individual perfection of aesthetic writing techniques may serve as a tool to preserve the benefits of human evolution and to develop individual consciousness.