Love is a many-splendoured thing:
Once on a high and windy hill,
In the morning mist, two lovers kissed,
And the world stood still.
Then your fingers touched my silent heart and taught it how to sing.
Yes, true love’s a many-splendoured thing! (Matt Monroe)
That old song is actually a musical and poetical description of
chemical reactions caused by C43H66N12O12S2 , known to scientists as oxytocin and to us,ignorant lot, as a “cuddle drug”, “liquid trust” and even a “glue of social bonding” without which we would be lonesome rogue-elephants or worse. Well, don’t take my word for it because no lesser authority than BBC Science programme has recently published the final word on defining that many-splendoured thing, given by a learned American professor of neuroscience. Love, he said, is…” just a series of chemical events.” Quite so, but it would be helpful to know which species of love are we talking about. Because there are as many “loves” as there are “lovers”. For example, those prairie voles which have led the learned academic to his conclusions have a lot of volish hormones in their bodies, but I have never been a vole, so how could I know what sweet words pass between them when they are bonding? The problem with some scientists is that they use a sylogizm “my aunt has two legs and a goose has two legs; therefore, a goose is also my aunt”. Another scientist from Oxford Univ. Future of Humanity Institute is more sceptical about love=spray of oxytocin plus a few other bits”. “We shouldn’t think that this perspective on its own provides a full understanding of what love is. “There are also evolutionary, psychological, sociological, phenomenological (a philosophical approach and method of qualitative research) and humanistic perspectives that offer important insights.” Quite so. But the lure of a sensational headline in all media is irrestible to some academics. I am not going out today to buy a sprayer of “cuddle drug”. But in the threatening financial tsunami, banks could spray their customers with that vital “trust hormone”. Some researchers suggests that when peeople are given a whiff of oxytocin they are “more generous and trusting in tasks that involve sharing money with strangers.” Sometimes I wonder if my wallet might have been occasionally sprayed by some friends with that misty many-splendoured stuff. Unfortunately, it is odourless.
