Love != f (organic chemistry)

(this means, love is not a function of organic chemistry)

Recently watched the tamil movie Aayutha ezhuthu (Yuva in Hindi) again. This particular scene struck me for its ridiculously bad reductionist dialogues by Sujatha.




The protagonist, who incidentally is a very bright physicist in the movie, explains to his sweetheart that love is non-existent and it is merely organic chemistry. He also goes on to say that it is all a matter of hormones like Androgen, estrogen, testosterone and progesterone. He explains all of this with an air of supreme nonchalance as if they have been established truths for millennia. This obviously has the implication that those who did not know that love is merely organic chemistry are dumb morons.

Such absurd reductionism!!! It is a pity that Sujatha, a person holding a bachelors in physics and masters in electronics, subscribes to such stupid reductionist notions. Physics nobel laureate P.W.Anderson so lucidly explained in his 1972 article, More is different, in Science journal that such notions are totally absurd.

Anderson explains that, 'the main fallacy in this kind of thinking is that the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a "constructionist" one: This ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe'. He goes on to roughly arrange the sciences in a hierarchy as 'particle physics, many body physics, chemistry, molecular biology, cellular biology, ..., physiology, psychology and social sciences.' He then says, 'The elementary entities of one science obeys the laws of the science that precedes it in the above hierarchy. But, this does not imply that one science is just an applied version of the science that precedes it. At each stage, entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology nor is biology applied chemistry.' He explains his claim using the principle of symmetry making. Ill strongly recommend the readers to read the article by Anderson. Thus, love is not simply a function of organic chemistry. Unfortunately for us, neither did Sujatha nor Maniratnam (the director of the above mentioned movie) knew about this. As a result, they subjected large swathes of unsuspecting populace to such stupid ideas.

Funnily, the article actually ends with a ridiculing poke at molecular biologists. Quoting from the article, 'The arrogance of the particle physicist and his intensive research may be behind us (the discoverer of positron said "the rest is chemistry"), but we have yet to recover from that of some molecular biologists, who seem determined to try to reduce everything about the human organism to "only" chemistry, from the common cold to all mental disease to religious instinct.'

Wonder what Anderson would say about people who think that love can be reduced to chemistry.


PS: Interested folks should read 'Reinventing the sacred' by Stuart Kauffman and 'Turning Point' by Fritjof Capra.


PPS: An objection to the post from a friend.

"It is a pity that Sujatha, a person holding a bachelors in physics and masters in electronics, subscribes to such stupid reductionist notions." How do you know that he "subscribes" to ? Thats the objection.

Yes. This is correct. The words spoken could well have been written for the protagonist and Sujatha may not have subscribed to this view. There is absolutely no evidence to support the fact that Sujatha subscribed to this view.

But, there is something subtle going on here. The scene depicts the protagonist as a very well learned and 'more knowledgeable' person than the hoi polloi. This is achieved here by making the protagonist mouth some 'modern' scientific 'truth'. I really doubt if Sujatha would have written this statement if he had not 'believed' in it himself but of course there is no clear cut evidence. I am sure they would not make the protagonist say something like 'the earth is flat'. Despite that, I withdraw the above pointed criticism of Sujatha. The connection I made out is by no means clear. But, I do wish to make the point that my suspicion is highly likely.

I am not cleaning up the original post as it would cause confusion if someone who has already read it reads this again.

Flower and garbage

The flower is on its way to become garbage. The garbage is on its way to become flower. Realize this. Don't fear the garbage.

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Aham annamasmi

We are what we eat. A basic and fundamental theorem that unfortunately beats most of us. We are absolutely nothing else but what we eat. That includes our finger nails, blood, heart muscles, WBC, neurons in the brain and.... the thoughts in our brain. We eat better and we will have better heart and better thoughts.

So, avoid chemical rich food, avoid packaged food, avoid frozen food, avoid microwaved food. The last one is especially bad. That is basically nuking our food. Avoid this crap. Non-organic food is NOT food. Food cannot be anything but organic. If its not organic, its not food.

I am sure many of us would have read news about how fish, deer and other animals have died because they ate plastic bags etc. I used to wonder when I was a kid how come these animals did not know that what they are eating is gonna kill them. Now, sadly, I know the answer.

Watch this video to hear what Mark Bittman has to say about the food we eat.

PS:
1.) Read this article - Rethinking the meat guzzler
2.) Changed the title of the post

Interesting trivias unleashed .. by me .. :-)

1) Change is the only constant thing in the world ..

Did we ever think that we arent same in our physical appearance, mental perceptions, understanding and even love. We struggle to change now and then which we think we need to do for bringing peace. Change is a beautiful thing, just as hope a beautiful thing in the world.

2) You dont need to be rich to give freely ..

Well this is the recent trivia I experience, less seems happy and beautiful. Simplicity and happiness are born out of giving one's whatsoever..

3) Love as the most simplest and easiest "science bar philosophy" to understand ..

Eisteen, karl marx, davince are special people of course .. but as a common man, we can easily love someone/something to understand the core philosophy of origin.

How is it .. :-D

Strength and force

'When you have strength, you don't need force. You will be happy. When you don't have strength, you need force. You will not be happy'.

That is my realization of the day.


The more force you have to apply on your mind to push yourself to get something done, the less happy you are. The more you get attached to your work and results. The less force you have to apply to get something done, the more happy you are. The less you get attached to your work and results. Yoga builds strength in the mind-body continuum and gets you to do things with strength and not force. Thus, yoga could possibly build up non attachment this way.

I see this principle true especially in grad school and in general in a lot of places in the modern world. A lot of force is needed to perform and in many cases just survive. A super aggressive supervisor pushes his/her students to perform more and more. A super aggressive manager pushes his/her subordinates to perform more and more. The unfortunate students/employees have to push themselves more and more to live up to the expectations. They need to force themselves more and more. This certainly causes a lot of unhappiness.

Unhappiness is a virus. It spreads easily from people to people. What more, once it spreads to a sufficient critical number of people, it spreads to the planet also. Result? Global warming, ozone depletion, species extinction blah blah blah.