Love: Prove it.

Wrestling with finding empirical proof that love in any form is more than a biology driven need.

Your thoughts?

rugadd

I find this to be an interesting idea and I too would like to know if anyone knows of any “proof” that may exist. I would also be interested in any ideas and opinions anyone may have.

As for myself… I find that there are many things in existence that the tools to measure or to identify a quantifiable amount of tangible empirical data just don’t seem to be within our grasp. Yet! And this in turn has led me to learn to take some things merely of faith.

There are things that I gnow to be true and things that I just can’t imagine there not being. Example: My daughter asked me one day if I believed in fairies. I answered yes! I’m not sure they would be like the things we see in cartoons or in books, and I’m quite certain I would not know what they looked like or how they would behave. But why wouldn’t there be? Perhaps they are just a function of nature that play a role we are yet to discover? The point is that even though I can’t see something, measure it or even clearly define it does not make it any less “real.” I would think that most that hold to any religious group could understand that idea.

And if love is just a biological need, then why would we question it? I do not question the need to eat or the feeling that I should preserve my own life when it is threatened. I feel as if we were built with some purpose to our design. And until I can completely understand that purpose or design who am I to question it?

I am by NO means saying that there are things we shouldn’t question. And perhaps in my acceptance of things I just don’t fully understand yet I have become too complacent… so, I also ask for input on this subject as well.

I found a couple lectures or the topic that explain a bit of the chemical response and cause of love. But I have not found anything on more than the scientific workings of the biological systems even though she refers to it as, “The world’s greatest prize!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfoGTIG7pY

There is also a site that has a quiz to take that can help with research. (Chemistry .com) But it is a dating site so… buyer beware!

The next is a bit more extensive and covers things from slightly different angles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ewvCNguug&feature=relmfu

Love is a many splendored thing, Love lifts us up where we belong, All you need is love! LOL, love certainly seems like a drug to me.

I think the foundations of love are purely biological, that its an interplay of neurotransmitters but that the subconscious plays a big role by being in charge of it. The experience of love though obviously is part of the conscious mind. You'd have to experience the experience as by definition its an experience. The only way to measure the experience is to measure the neurotransmitters, electromagentic activity and behaviours. That 'I Am' video found by PloKoon indicates the heart and other parts of the body might act as sensors to other people thoughts and feelings, so if we bundle all those variables together into a subconscious system, then I could imagine it exhibiting the complexity we experience in love. That complexity might make it hard for science to measure it in as much detail as we experience.

Adder ... did you just try to clone Dan Dennett with Lynne McTaggart ???

That is just a science experiment gone wrong ..

Is gravity real? Or just a reaction of circumferential force? When you fall off a building, do you really fall to the earth? And if you fall hard enough, can it make a real difference on you when you hit the ground?

What can be real about love whether or not it is just a biological driven force? How can we measure love? How can we see it? How can it possibly be tangible?

The interesting thing about love (like gravity), is that, if one were to try to "catch" it, they could only do it upon what it reflects off of. Like the smile on your loved-one's face when you make them feel amazing about themselves, or your child when they see you for the first time in months or years after you come back from the middle east.

Just like you cannot tangibly grasp "gravity" unless you observe its reactive effects... in THAT form, you can see just how real it is.

Different phenomena, Proteus ...

For a study of love and its effects read the works of Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni. It is not easy reading really (well, the words are), but apt for the subject.

I would suggest :

Innamoremento e amore
Ti amo

Considering we are all just decaying organic matter orbiting a dying star, how can it be anythieng more than a biological impulse, like eating, breathing, blinking...after all, there are really only two things that we as humans enjoy:serotonin and dopamine.

So yeah, biological.

rugadd wrote: Wrestling with finding empirical proof that love in any form is more than a biology driven need.

Your thoughts?

rugadd

You might not be able to prove it but that does not mean it's not true. It might be true and impossible to prove. Provability is a weaker notion than truth. (Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem)

Love has been a topic long in discussions in many fields for thousands of years... Philosophy, Science, Biology, Theology, etc.

It manifests in such ways it intertwines all... Just accept it is there and move on... There is no one direct answer for it....