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.