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Anthony Leo
Professor Amy Metcalf
Eng 1020
14 July 2010
Love: Beyond the Scope of Science
Is love real? If so, what is it? And, why do we experience it? Humans have attempted
explanations to these weighty questions since the dawn of recorded history and most likely well
before. There are examples throughout history of philosophers, artists, and spiritually minded
people who have done their best to shape a definition for this elusive term. Now, armed with the
newest technologies and insight into the workings of the universe, a different sect of society is
taking aim at defining what it means to love another person. Scientists, more specifically
neurobiologists, around the globe are taking the stance that love is completely encompassed
within the confines of our mind. By boiling it down to a handful of neurotransmitters and the
Theory of Evolution, these scientists are trying to simplify a concept that partially exists outside
the realm of human understanding. What their research fails to explain is mankind’s selfactualization beyond the means of procreation, the survival of ideas that are contrary to the
Theory of Evolution, and the belief that is spread across all cultures that the love between two
souls posses some element that endures throughout eternity.
“...I have come to believe that romantic love is a universal human feeling, produced by
specific chemicals and networks in the brain” (51) . This is Helen Fisher’s argument in her
book, Why We Love. She believes that the chemicals, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin,
are responsible for the affection and love you feel for another person; and since a certain level of
these chemicals in our brains is necessary for us to experience happiness, Fisher likens love to an
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addiction. “Is love an addiction? Yes; I think it is-- a blissful dependency when one’s love is
returned, a painful, sorrowful, and often destructive craving when one’s love is spurned” (53) .
Fisher continues by breaking down the feelings experienced during both romantic love and
rejection and correlating these feelings to the chemicals which induce them.
While this is an accurate explanation of the mechanics behind love and how we love, it
does not adequately explain why we love. To achieve this end, Dr. Fisher presents the case that
evolution is responsible for the stages of romantic love and that this evolutionary process is how
the systems in our brain that regulate love came into existence. More simply, this means that the
humans who experience love are those who survive and therefore pass on their DNA. According
to her theories, sex specific chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen fuel partner seeking
behavior. Then dopamine triggers partner selection and finally serotonin lays the foundation for
bonding. Bonding, she claims, is an evolutionary mechanism that causes a male and female to
remain close for only as long as it takes to rear healthy offspring. In summary, she believes that
love is entirely a mechanism for procreation.
Procreation, however, is not always the primary goal of a happily married couple. Some
married couples, who claim to be blissfully in love, have no intention of ever having kids. Yet
they experience the same sort of long-term bonding as couples who are continuously turning out
children. If love is entirely a mechanism for procreation, how is it these couples can claim to be
in love? They are able to claim they are in love because they have a very basic understanding of
what it actually means to love someone. Or, at the very least, they know that love is not
something hard-wired into your brain as a means to turn out as many grandchildren as possible.
For many of us (if not most of us), there are things in this world other than having kids
that make us happy. Some of these activities we identify with so much that we willingly pass up
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the opportunity to have children which is contrary to the Theory of Evolution. For example,
consider a priest. A priest might be forbidden by the doctrine of his religion to wed and bear
children. It would be extremely presumptuous to assume that he either regrets this decision or
that his brain is an evolutionary mistake. He has simply found something that he believes is
larger than his own life and he has committed himself to it. This is very similar to the feeling
people experience when they truly love someone and this is why a married couple can live
without children and still claim to be in love. It has nothing to do with producing the maximum
number of offspring. Being in love is realizing that your full-potential as a person exists within
another person and that the most you can get out of life is to share every aspect of it with that
person. If you can honestly say that ________ makes you feel like a complete human being and
you believe without a shadow of a doubt that they would say the same, then you don’t need
anyone to tell you that you’re in love. In other words, being in love is finding mutual selfactualization within a relationship. It is not maximizing the number of times your DNA is passed
on.
This is absolutely contrary to the Theory of Evolution. However, what is even more
contrary to this theory is the idea that people will actually die for love. It is a notion that has been
romanticized across cultures. To quote Shakespeare:
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
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The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
Here's to my love!
Drinks
O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
Dies
This, of course, tells the notorious story of Romeo and Juliet. In this love tragedy, Romeo is
mistakenly led to believe that his love, Juliet, has died and thereby he takes his own life because
he believes that his life is not worth living without her. The idea of taking your own life after the
death of your significant other is a theme that is common throughout romantic tragedies.
Unfortunately, tales like this also take place in the real world from time to time. So, how is this
explained by evolutionary biology? What cocktail of chemicals is launched into our brain that
implores us to take our own lives for the sake of love?
To be frank, neurobiologists could probably list off a number of chemicals and hormones
that, once triggered, would drive someone to this unreasonable conclusion. The problem is, this
doesn’t explain why someone would kill him or herself. Why would evolution lead the human
race to develop such a potentially dangerous emotion? It seems very impractical for survival.
The fact of the matter is, these chemicals only describes how a person is driven into so much
angst that they feel the need to take their own life. Scientists are able to observe the chemicals
and their effects but they can only speculate why they are there to begin with.
This is the limit of the deductive powers of physical science. It is entirely limited to
observational data. Scientists can make reasonable inferences into the nature of things by
recording observations and understanding the patterns within the data. For example, after
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numerous experiments, scientists have deduced that objects near the surface of the Earth fall at
9.8 meters per second squared due to gravity. They’ve even been able to accurately predict how
objects will react to gravity in different scenarios (such as the surfaces of different planets or in
deep space). What scientists cannot tell you is why objects experience gravity. To this day no
mechanism has been found that causes gravity. It just happens... The data is recorded and
formulas are derived and science accepts it as the natural order of things. This is because
deductive reasoning cannot reach a conclusion about why something works unless something
physically tangible can be observed setting it into motion. This is the same reason why love
cannot be entirely explained by physical science. Neurologists can explain to us which chemicals
trigger which feelings and how certain elements of love can help a species survive. What they
cannot explain is why love consumes us, why some people feel that love is all they need, and
why some people are willing to take their own life for the loss of it. These actions are not
reasonable and they serve no evolutionary purpose. Therefore, it is unlikely that love originated
in the human subconscious by means of evolution.
The truth is, that it is possible for ideas, such as love, to exist independently from human
thought all together. If everyone forgot the meaning of democracy, would it still exist? The word
might die, but the idea still exists whether we can accurately describe it or not. The world would
still continue to be home to countries that are ideologically ruled by the majority and even if a
dictator laid claim to the entire world, the possibility of a democracy would still linger
somewhere. Knowledge of a democracy does not have to be passed down from generation to
generation via word of mouth or a genetically tuned train-of-thought in order to exist. Its concept
cannot be found intrinsically within our DNA. It is simply an idea that exists somewhere and like
all ideas, it is constantly waiting to be discovered and translated into a way of thinking that our
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brains can process. Furthermore, democracy could have been a concept discovered well before or
well after it was. If you extrapolate that premise, you could argue that a concept such as
democracy is not bound by the constraints of time and therefore exists throughout eternity. Love
posses these same characteristics.
Consider this poem taken from Rumi: The Book of Love.
This we are now
created the body, cell by cell,
like bees building a honeycomb.
The human body and the universe
grew from this, not this
from the universe and the human body. (19-24)
There seems to be a lot of truth in the the last three lines of this poem. However, if you
believe that love is a product of evolution then it would not be unreasonable to look at an
evolutionary timeline and theorize a range of time in which love most likely originated.
Therefore, you would not be able to subscribe to idea that love is a timeless expression. Also,
you would have to settle with the conclusion that the love between two people dies at the point of
death when their neurons stop firing. There is something very unappealing about both of these
notions. For some reason, it is a vastly more comforting thought to imagine an eternally
entangled coexistence with your loved one.
Is there a science behind that statement? No. Should there be? Probably not. Part of what
makes real love so beautiful is that every person who experiences it is given license to attempt
their own personal definition. There is no scientifically correct answer. Regardless of what
chemicals are making our brains tick, most people who have experienced it, will acknowledge
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that real love is not entirely describable. It’s like happiness, but its not. It’s like a presence, but
it’s not. It’s like finding the missing part of you and at the same time it’s like giving yourself
away entirely. The chemicals and hormones in our brain only explain a somewhat trivial truth
regarding love. They do not comprise love and are certainly not an adequate way to define love.
The wholest definition of love escapes human understanding. Anyone who has sincerely
experienced it will testify that people should spend more time seeking and enjoying love and less
time explaining it.
Works Cited
Fisher, Helen E. Why We Love: the Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. New York: H. Holt,
2004. Print.
Jalāl, Al-Dīn Rūmī, and Coleman Barks. Rumi: the Book of Love : Poems of Ecstasy and
Longing. New York, NY: HarperOne, HaperCollins, 2003. Print.
Shakespeare, William. "Romeo and Juliet: Entire Play." The Complete Works of William
Shakespeare. Web. 15 July 2010. <http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html>.