- ISBN13: 9780805077964
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
"If you want flashes and particular experiences of romantic love, read novels. If you want to understand this central quality of human nature to its roots, read Why We Love."
—Edward O. Wilson
In Why We Love, renowned anthropologist Helen Fisher offers a new map of the phenomenon of love—from its origins in the brain to the thrilling havoc it creates in our bodies and behavior. Working with a team of scientists to scan the brains of people who had just fallen madly in love, Fisher proved what psychologists had until recently only suspected: when you fall in love, specific areas of the brain "light up" with increased blood flow. This sweeping new book uses this data to argue that romantic passion is hardwired into our brains by millions of years of evolution. It is not an emotion; it is a drive as powerful as hunger.
Provocative, enlightening, engaging, and persuasive, Why We Love offers radical new answers to age-old questions: what love is, who we love—and how to keep love alive.
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
Tags: Love....., renowned anthropologist, Chemistry
Related posts:
- Love Science: Falling in Love Simply a Matter of Brain Chemistry
- True Love – How We Have Misunderstood The True Nature Of Love
- The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age
- Romantic Attraction
- What Is Love Chemically? How Can We Define Love With Regard To The Chemical Processes Concurrent With It?
Is nothing sacred? Now science is trying to stick its cold clinical explanatory fingers into our most cherished of human emotions: romantic love. It’s surprising that such a book was written, for like matters of morality, ethics, religion, and personal opinions, the topic of love is supposed to be outside of science’s grasp, unable to be contained in a test tube.
Yet the author tries. Using evolution as the lens through which to analyze love, some pretty crazy ideas are put forth, not the least of which is that all animals are claimed to have romantic love. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time picturing a pair of seals or hyenas or newts having a candlelight dinner, commenting on how beautiful the full moon is, and looking forward to growing old together in holy matrimony.
Cold, often silly ideas are out forth on why we choose partners. Maybe his/her ears and nose are symmetrical! Her waist-to-hip ratio isn’t bad either! I think I’ll propose right now! I feel a dopamine and seratonine rush! Bah. All the chemical tests and brain scans in the world can’t explain away True Love. Fisher is looking for love in all the wrong places. Love conquers all, including this book’s attempts to explain it away.
Rating: 2 / 5
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
I bought this book because I am revisiting the question of whether God exists and have come to the point where I can make a good argument either way. On God’s plus side are art and love: so a book about love, written by a pseudoscientist, deserves serious consideration and an open mind.
I have made heaps of notes for every instance where the author makes an assertion, with little foundation or entirely on speculation, only to contradict herself on the next page. Her thesis is that “love” is nothing more that brain chemistry urging us to reproduce and pass on our DNA. So, clearly, the brain chemistry of same-sex partners must prevent them from loving each other as does the brain chemistry of individuals past their reproductive cycles. And, clearly, those individuals who have absolutely no wish to reproduce are incapable of falling in love at all.
This book is a complete waste of time and an even bigger waste of money. I will admit, however, that it has prompted me to think about love and the underlying question (is there a God/is there not a God)from an entirely fresh perspective. But what I find most interesting about this book is the author’s inability to fully commit herself to her thesis, thus the snippets of poetry and humanizing anecdotes at the start of each chapter.
Rating: 1 / 5
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
This book was not nearly as interesting as Why Him , Why Her which is another book by Helen Fisher. There were some very interesting things touched on in the book but I got way uninterested in most of the book because there are too many speculations in it. There are lots of speculations in the book about how ancient men and women
lived that are presented as facts instead of speculations. There is no way to prove that is really the way those men and women lived
because there are no written records and no one alive today saw them live that way. And my other big beef with the book is that
it presents the THEORY (key word) of Evolution as a fact. There
is a reason it’s called a theory and not the fact of Evolution.
There is no evidence to support this theory anywhere in nature.
The bible got it right when it says everything produces according
to it’s own kind. If evolution were indeed a fact then it would have to be continously occuring and out there somewhere there would
have to be half-apes half-men that were almost through their
evolutionary cycle and were almost human. There are none.
I’ve studied in real nature a lot not just textbooks and there
is no evidence anywhere in nature to support this theory of
evolution. I’ve lived on a farm (my grandpa was a farmer) and
I can tell you that dogs don’t have kittens and Cats don’t
have dogs as babies ever. Horses only prodcue horses, Cows
only produce Cows, Chickens only produce Chickens, even plant
life only produces after it’s own kind. Pumpkin seeds don’t
ever grow corn, and sunflower seeds don’t ever grow pumpkins.
Pumpkin seed only prodce pumpkins, etc. And Apes don’t ever produce
humans either. And I have yet to see a human baby ever born
that resembles our “next” step in evolution. There is a lot
more evidence to support the existence of GOD in that all of
nature is so perfectly designed to reproduce after it’s own kind.
And nothing ever evolves into anything else in nature. So as they
say in another form in the movie contact what is more plausible
that an amoeba turned into a human or that GOD created a human?
I might believe in Evolution if there were some actual evidence
of it but there isn’t. A friend of mine even says that Darwin
recanted his theory of evolution on his death bed (but I have no evidence of this either).
Sincerely,
Jon Beckmon
Rating: 2 / 5
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
Most of what this author cites is readily available online and has been already popularized in numerous magazines and TV shows. Yet this author, whose field is anthropology, presents herself as some neuroscientist. She most certainly is not. One reviewer calls this an approximate “science of love.” There is no approximate science, for it would not be science then. Only approximations are used in science. Science is a peer-reviewed process or examining falsifiable observations that must be readily reproduced. Often in the field of biology, no one reproduces what another lab or group has done.
There are some interesting results reported here, but they are just that: results. To be a real science of love, then a mechanistic understanding of how love arises should be explained. This ultimately would mean explaining emotion and the subjective state of emotional experiences that neuroscientists call qualia. This in turn would mean understanding that faculty that has eluded scientists since time immemorial: consciousness. We are no where near such an understanding.
Lastly, this author has demonstrated an obsession with relationship issues and sex. She is constantly putting a biased pro-female spin on everything. One of her books (The First Sex) proclaimes that women would dominate in every facet of the world. Sex is better for women. Love is more intense for them and so on. She is the product of her feminist 70′s educating, and moreover despite nearing retirement age, she never assumed any true professorship status. She is among the lowest rungs of academia, making her money in peddling these kinds of laughable psuedo-science in such books and magazines like Glamour and Cosmo.
She is not a scientist and has no formal training in the fields that she is reporting on. The facts are far from being out and the verdict is not always in, and again no real understaning on how we experience our emtions is understood.
This is just a dumb good-feel book for the mauldin minded and sentimental.
Rating: 1 / 5
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
Romantic love is emotional cocaine on the brain. Studies have shown it. It is recklessness, poor judgement, and a biological drive to have children which serves an evolutionary purpose. It is not love when it is romance. Simply … temporary mania, psyhosis, and insanity. Romantic “love” is the most ungrounding thing to one’s emotional well-being. The best lives are often ruined by love: destroyed relationships, poor quality of lifestyle, etc.
The only real love in the world is to one’s offspring or surrogate offspring, siblings, close family members, and deep platonic friendships, and of course … beloved pets. Romantic love is a myth perpetuated by Hollywood fantasy. It does not exist. In fact, it is very dangerous. We love because we are hard wired to be crazy enough to hook up with someone who is often totally wrong for us.
Rating: 5 / 5
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love