The Physics of Love
All things are governed by the laws of physics, scientists tell us, and that just because we don’t understand how or are unable to explain “why” doesn’t mean that they aren’t. Everything makes sense when we apply the laws of physics to it. We see it time and time again, even in space, on the moon, on Mars, everywhere. Nothing escapes the laws of physics. Nothing.
I have read numerous books on the subject and listened to many scholars debate it, inevitably leading to the same conclusion that everything is but a puppet and physics is the strings. I have read and listened with and open mind and I believe this idea to be wrong. Yes, physics does explain why the sun rises and sets. Yes, physics does explain how to get a rocket into space. Yes, physics can explain how I’m able to type this and how my mind is processing the thought put into it. Yes, physics can even explain Creation (to some degree), but there is on thing that comes to mind in which physics does not explain. Love.
It is easy to explain why we are happy or why we are sad because they are simply cause and effect emotions. Fear, anxiety, happiness, anger, hope, melancholy, even pain can all be explained through cause and effect. They are clearly defined, no need to investigate why we are angry at someone or why are are fearful of a situation to come up with a reason. The reason is obvious. Love, though, is a unique case. There is no clear cut reason as to why we love someone (or an idea). No equation exists that can e applied to this anomaly.
Physics cannot explain why we love nor can it explain why we fall out of love. It cannot quantify how much we love someone, nor can it quantify by how much it grows or dies each day. There is no way to measure the exact moment we fall in love, nor a way to measure when we fall out of it (if falling out of love is even possible). Just like there is no way to calculate all the decimals of pi, there is no way to measure all the different facets of love.
We know that pie is 3.14 and we know that love, in its simplest form, is a deep affection for someone. However, we can expand a little more. So we say that pi equals 3.1415, and that love is a deep affection for someone who makes you happy. Yet, we can expand even more. We say that pi equals 3.1415926535 and that love is a deep affection for someone who makes the clouds of your life go away and warms you to the core and whose very presence is enough to make you smile uncontrollably. Pi can go on and on, and so can love. There is no set number to pi, just and ever growing one. There is no definition of love, just an ever expanding one.
The difference between pi and love is the mathematicians of the ancient world used logic to derive the value of pi whereas the “value” of love is completely arbitrary. We can all agree that love stems from a deep affection, but even that “value” is very vague. When we try to expand on what it means to love someone or something, we find that different “values” pop up. Everyone’s perception of love is different and they are also all correct. All of these perceptions can come together and form one infinitely long definition of love, but as Einstein said, any value greater than infinity is meaningless.
If we expand pi out to 500 decimals and multiply it by ten, the only value that would be of any importance would be 31.4. The numbers after that initial three are meaningless because they are so minuscule that it doesn’t affect the value in any significant way. It’s the same with love. We can put together definitions and from one larger “value” but, just like pi, definitions after the initial on are meaningless. They don’t add any real substance to the “value” of love. Logically, the next step would be to say that the definition of love is simply “a deep affection for someone”, right? Wrong.
What does it mean to have “a deep affection for someone”? What does “affection” even mean? We find that when we try to determine a definition for affection, we are in the same boat we were in when we were dealing with love. There is no solid foundation to work with, no beginning, only assumptions and opinions, and there is no other way to work with this anomaly. It seems that philosophers finally have something to ponder about that physicists haven’t already solved.
Copyright © 2011 Joseph Mordente. All rights reserved.
