Love is nothing but a complex chemical reaction?

I don't wan't to believe that love is scientifically explainable to be honest. To me, this would take something away from the experience of love. Knowing in the back of your mind that there was not really anything special or beyond our comprehension going on but it was all really attributable to a series of chemical releases and the brain and the bodys reaction to them would make being in love almost meaningless I think. Beyond the obvious evolutionary benefits, love would become insignificant.

I'd prefer love to stay a mystery, to remain an eternal muse for artists, poets and musicians to ponder but it seems this may not be the case for much longer.

news.bbc.co.uk...

And the idea of a drug you can use to make someone fall for you is just wrong if you ask me. just wrong.

thoughts?

That does not make sense.

Perhaps these chemicals they mention strengthen the "magical" love, but I very much doubt they're the only cause.

I would choose to believe that there is of course more than one kind of love.

There is the chemical reaction by the body induced by "falling" in love, as well as the oxytocin connection when a mother is breast feeding and such that the body provides to facilitate bonding while at the same time there would be a higher more altruistic love.

The chemical reactions, imo, are not love but a result of it, love is a basic universal energy, a positive pole on the energy spectrum, a creational force. It is, again imo, scientifically explainable, but not reductionist, it is present throughout time and space and is the animus behind complexity. It's opposite is fear, a force of seperation and conflict, a force of destruction.

Love is vibration. Fear is the cold black silence that is left in love's absence.

All other emotions, and indeed all complexity stem from this fractal source, the dialetic vortex of love and fear. One cannot exist without the other, but there is a direction from negative to positive, to be followed for one's personal enlightenment.

They are chemical reactions,a mass murderer who loves listening to his screaming victims probably has the exact same chemical enduced feelings of that of a person who loves (insert here).Its not some magical force...all our feelings are chemical enduced but through upbringing,situations in life,experiences may be enduced at different times.A person handling spiders all of their life wont get the adrenalin boost of fight or flight while somone who hasn't and is scared of spiders will.Same chemicals being released,same feelings but different circumstances in which they are released.And please stop with this universal energy crap,this is the science forum,that sort of talk is gray area material.



[edit on 10-1-2009 by Solomons]

If one would look at it from scientific point of view - life itself is a mere complex chemical reaction. Nothing more. I deeply feel that it is not so. For what it is worth.
And as for love - it kind of messes with the concept. Dear, i "complex chemical reaction" you very very much - even sounds wrong.

The definition of the word love should be considered far more abstract or encompassing than it has been traditionally. While most everyone is apparently under the impression they understand love, no one can seem to give a concise and all encompassing definition of it. Its scope is simply too broad to create full vision of while in conversation, a truly daunting effort that would turn into a monologue if followed through. If you are charged with defining a word, you must not omit a single detail. Indeed, definition does imply an effort to relay understanding, meaning and full significance.

While most dictionaries differ on everything from how many amendments to place under the word love, to what parts of speech it encompasses, they all seem to stick with defining it with itself. That’s how difficult it is to fully define; also indicating that it has eluded even the most accomplished scholars for centuries. Some attest that it doesn’t exist. In fact, there isn’t even a direct translation for the word love in Japanese – a language developed by a people who have always taken education far more serious than any other race on the planet. Is it perhaps, a task too daunting?

Nay, I assure you love is real. One must simply disregard our self-professed masters' teachings that we are all separate from one another and everything else around us to understand it.

Most people attribute false meanings to it on a regular basis for simply the lack of clear or concise thought process (Lust, Greed, Jealousy), yet the word love can be defined as a feeling of most unrealized joy - in all variance - derived from the rewards of connectedness we associate with all people, places, things and ideas we can safely take for granted (this is why we often don't notice it until we lose it). It is the one all-encompassing emotion (feeling) that keeps us connected to everything around us. Love is to right, as hate is to wrong. Hate keeps you separate, whereas love keeps you connected. Obviously hate is real, but if it wasn't, we'd have no understanding of love at all, for love is hate's opposite in equal proportions. For every negativity hate assumes, love has an equal positivity to balance it. Am I sounding Buddhist (hmm)?

Anyone wish to delve further into philosophy? Great Thread! I love this subject.

EDIT: I believe you've found my distraction. But be warned - every pursuit into the understanding of the word love is pursuit in the right direction.

[edit on 10-1-2009 by lagnar]

Professor Young appears to me to be falling into the same old trap that has plagued most scientists for some time now. When scientific theories become the main push for all of one's views on humanity, the concept of something being unknown or unknowable becomes a concept that threatens their entire view of life, and something that is therefore unacceptable. Scientists will tend to think in terms of scientific principles, just as mechanics think mechanically and janitors see dirt everywhere they look.

The presence of oxytocin may be an integral part of the emotion of love, but that does not mean it is the entire thing. The firing of a spark plug is an integral part of internal combustion engine operation, but just sparking those plugs does not mean the engine will run. The article itself gives this quote:

"I'm sure that we are just beginning to tap the surface," he (Professor Young) said.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk...
(italicized added by me for clarity)

Love is not only seemingly intolerant to scientific explanation, it exists in so many forms and degrees that it would be difficult to quantify in a single series of laboratory experiments. The love between a child and a parent, the love between two friends, the love between spouses, and the love between a parent and child are all unique and distinct types of love. It is no real surprise that there are bio-chemical indicators involved in the process, since our physical brains are essentially electrochemical in nature. Yet, the presence of a particular neuro-transmitter (or even of a range of neuro-transmitters) would not necessarily lead to a thorough explanation of what love is.

The thing I worry about when I hear these types of articles is an attempt, although quite probably not a conscious one, to reduce the beauty, uniqueness, and efficiency of the human individual to a rigid set of engineering specifications. Such an attempt is foolhardy, IMEO, due to the fact that every human on the planet has proven themselves to be truly unique and special. Evidence for this? The myriad of different reactions to identical situations, personal likes and dislikes, tastes, feelings, attractions, ad infinitum.

So go ahead and believe love is truly a noble, romantic, mysterious force in our universe. I'll agree with you; I believe it is too.

TheRedneck

I don't believe in complex chemical reactions where love in concerned but
I do believe in love.
I do believe in love.
I do believe in love.

After that, its all complex chemical reactions.

But what is life but complex chemical reactions.

Ah life.

I'm going to agree with this, love is a chemical. Just as all emotions are. When you're talking about love for a family or friend, that's more to do with caring for them. Love is just an excessive word for lust and desire. Chemical emotions produced by the brain to make us feel the need to have sex, reproduce, keep the species going.





[edit on 12-1-2009 by andre18]

If you believe love is just chemical you are falling out of tune with it, as it's actually a vibration. This will bring bad fortune to one's life and will delay one's spiritual development. Love is, at a fundamental level, energy, from which a fractal structure constructs itself, at a level which you see the mentioned chemical interactions, which give form to a deeper reality.

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge

Your viewpoint is quite common, but it ignores the VERY REAL mystery of duality. That is -- from the outside looking inward to a human, all you see is chemical reactions. But from the inside looking out, there is something else.

I can't be sure that YOU are more than chemical reactions, but I am sure that I am more than that.

I can't prove this to you, but I shouldn't need to if you are in fact more than chemical reactions (which I am pretty confident you are.)

reply to post by andre18

Love is just an excessive word for lust and desire.

Sad, so, so, very sad.

Love is much more than reproductive desire, my friend. Do you love your parents? I hope so. Do you want to reproduce with them? I hope not!

There is a world of difference between having sexual relations and loving. Sex is not 'making love'. Love is much deeper and much stronger than simply a convenience that makes procreation easier.

This is why the family structure is breaking down. This is why children are growing up in broken homes with no father, or a different father than their own. This is why divorce rates are over 50% nationally. This is why domestic violence thrives in our society. Wer have confused sex with love, and the two are different as night and day.

Sex is indeed a physical reaction to stimuli, electrochemical in nature. Love is something else entirely.

I hope everyone reading this understands...

TheRedneck

I completely disagree!! Love has nothing to do with a chemical reaction.
Infatuation is what's being mistaken for love. Feelings come and go in the course of a relationship. Love is a decision! An act of will! When you truly love someone or something, you have made a conscience choice to do so, regardless of your feelings.

Sorry, science has it wrong!

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


Actually i am very happy that it is your point of view. Since even if (sorry for quoting myself )

from scientific point of view - life itself is a mere complex chemical reaction....
I deeply feel that it is not so.

So i am quite happy that you know (and i feel - zero knowledge
after all ) that we (and another billions of people) are not just complex chemical reaction. Physics and biology also are involved. Just kidding.

Love is a neuro-chemical con-job

..or so I believed many, many, years ago.
Once you experience true love, you can call it whatever you want,
but there ain't nothing else like it in the entire world.
True Love is...

unquestionable, undefinable, unbelievable.

reply to post by Chonx


Love comes from consciousness, not from chemical reactions.
The chemical reactions are the result of One's consciousness when it wills to Love.

The question really is, from wence comes consciousness.

The composition of Love is irrelevant to our experience with it. Reduce the complex forms of our experience to some unified definition.
When we experience it, I don't think we will go back and say, "oh that was just some chemical process"

The phenomenons of our ability to transmit senses like taste into a scientific explanation won't change what great food taste like

Love is mysterious because even if you can explain how it comes about, you can't always explain its influence.

reply to post by TheRedneck

Love is much more than reproductive desire, my friend. Do you love your parents? I hope so. Do you want to reproduce with them? I hope not!

And if you actually read my post at all you’d have read this part “When you're talking about love for a family or friend, that's more to do with caring for them.”

Love is nothing special. You love someone enough; you usually marry them then comes the divorce. You find someone else, you marry them – suddenly love is not so special after all.

I'm glad that so many feel that this analysis of the nature of love is wrong, it really scares me to think that love and even our consciousness as a whole is nothing but the result of chemical and electric activity. That thought really makes life seem like a pointless accident and I can't live my life believing that.

I really like how an anonymous poster put it when they said that from the outside love is a complex chemical reaction but from within looking out, the truth of the matter becomes clear, beautiful sentiment.

thanks for the input guys.