Final Essay - All You Need Is Biology?

All You Need Is Biology?

            Love is arguably one of the most complicated human emotions but can also be argued as the most simple of all the emotions. Humans covet love and struggle their whole lives to find their “soul-mate”. Well, what if this magical human emotion could be explained scientifically? Would humans still believe that love can heal all wounds or would our views change over time? Even though human biology and chemistry may play a big role in our emotions – love reaches beyond the world of scientific terms and chemical reactions.

There are scientists and philosophers who continue to work on finding a scientific explanation for the common feelings of love that humans feel. In their article, “Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Attractiveness”, Berhnard Fink and Ian Penton-Voak choose three factors of human behavior to explain how we choose a mate. “Evolution psychology has focused on the perception of three major cues that may underpin biologically significant assessments of mate value: (a) symmetry, (b) averageness, and (c) nonaverage sexually dimorphic features” (Fink & Voak, 155). The article continues to describe those three factors as being the main reasons we pick a mate (at least in the category of their facial features). Scientists are striving to pinpoint aspects of love and match them with our “lovey-dovey” feelings. But in the case of Fink & Voak, does facial attractiveness outweigh other decisions when we find our soul-mate? Despite the intriguing data and conclusions about evolutionary psychology, the findings do not encompass the entire emotion of human love.

Helen Fisher and her associates are spending their time to further the research of human love. In the article, “Romantic Love: A Mammalian Brain System for Mate Choice”, Fisher et al. relate the brain systems of other mammals to human brain systems in an effort to see some similarities.

“A number of groups have reported that the basic human motivations and emotions arise from distinct systems of neural activity and that these brain systems derive from mammalian precursors. Thus, it is parsimonious to suggest that a mammalian brain mechanism for courtship attraction is also active in Homo sapiens. Moreover, because human romantic love is a universal human phenomenon, because romantic love’s central characteristic is mate preference and because ‘being in love’ exhibits many of the other traits associated with mammalian courtship attraction, it has been hypothesized that human romantic love is a developed form of this mammalian neural mechanism for mate choice” (H. E. Fisher et al., 2174).

            Even though the data from this article is clear and thoroughly supported with other resources, it still seems to short-change the common idea of romantic love. Finding a neural mechanism for mate choice (or even specifically romantic love) does not explain our human nature to “fall in love” and spend the rest of our lives living happily ever after.

If love were solely a matter of chemistry and biology, we as humans would not care about finding our “true” love or our “soul mate”. We would view love as a situation “for the moment”, we would date others without intention of marriage or life-long monogamy. We would view physical attraction as a type of natural order and sexual intercourse would be mostly for procreation. Having children would only be for populating the Earth, not for the joy and happiness that a child brings to a family. Courtship would only be for obtaining another mate, not for finding a life-long partner. Changes in our beliefs about love would not only affect our behavior but it would drastically affect our institution of marriage. Marriage would be obsolete – why get married if biology dictates our lives and biology tells us to have many partners? Living in a world without marriage is a hard concept to wrap my brain around and it almost seems like a scary though. The institution of marriage is so deep-seeded in to our culture and is one the strongest traditions in the United States. Without marriage, our current beliefs about love and relationships would become naïve.

Our culture would observe a drastic change if love and relationships were matters of chemistry and biology. We are a culture that values love – so much so that almost every single song ever made has to do with some type of love (and of those, mostly romantic love). My generation values love as the one thing that can make you truly happy; we’re seeing more and more younger couples getting married without having a set career or plan in life because “love it all that matters”. If everyone gave up on finding their true love, I think a lot of us would feel empty and that is something that science cannot explain. Just because human romantic love is outside the boundaries of science should not stop scientists (and all others) from continuing research about love as a human emotion. Research and knowledge can only further our understanding of love even without scientific terms.

Works Cited

Buss, David. “The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating.” Academic   Communities/Disciplinary Conventions. Ed. Bonnie Beedles and Michael Petracca. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2001. 261-277.

Fink, Bernhard & Penton-Voak, Ian. “Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Attractiveness." Current Directions in Psychological Science Oct. 2002: 154-158. JSTOR. Web. 12 Sep. 2010.

Fisher, Helen E., Aron, Arthur, & Brown, Lucy L. “Romantic Love: A Mammalian Brain System for Mate Choice.” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences Dec. 2006: 2173-2186. Google Scholar. Web. 5 Dec. 2010. 


Images One and Three were found at http://love-theonlyrule.tumblr.com/
Image Two was found at http://weheartit.com/entry/5340947

Greatest Hits - Lauren

Lauren Spencer - Greatest Hits

Good luck with the rest of the semester! We can all see the light at the end of the tunnel. First, I would like to say that has been a pleasure reading your blog. I have always looked through your posts to hear your opinions and take on the weekly posts. I admire that although you have personal opinions and preferences – you keep them out of your writing for the most part. You have done an exceptional job of analyzing the readings and taking them at face value. Good luck with the rest of this course but honestly, if you just keep doing what you’ve been doing I’m sure you’ll do great.

Can We Be Good Without God?

I chose this as one of your greatest hits because I absolutely love this post. It is amazing to see that although you have had a specific upbringing in a particular religion, you can still see both sides to an argument. Its okay to pick a side every once in a while but it’s nice to see that you believe that not everything has to be black and white.

Nature and the Natural Instinct

This is a phenomenal post. You introduce the topic with clarity and reasoning but again mention that not everything can be black or white – “but who are we to judge or say what is natural or unnatural?”  Your views about nature tie perfectly in to its relation to homosexuality and you are able to express yourself clearly. This posts organization is very clear and flows nicely which makes it a lot easier to read and understand. Great job.

Music and Dancing

I chose this as another one of your greatest hits simply because of your ability to say, “honestly, I see it both ways”. Your thoughts of sexuality in the music industry are clearly outlined and although you may have a very specific opinion – you are also able to explain both sides of the argument and support both views. I hope you understand what a great characteristic this is to have in your writing – being able to express both sides clearly and without bias is a tremendous accomplishment and I admire you for it. 

Greatest Hits - Armando

Armando Teran Jr. – Greatest Hits

Good luck with the rest of the semester! It’s almost over, thank goodness. I’ve picked some “greatest hits” of yours and talked about them below but I thought I’d give some general feedback. Your posts throughout the semester seem to be very informative, you write clearly and your writing is easy to follow as a reader. I noticed that sometimes your posts jump from informative to opinionated very quickly, opinions are great but maybe adding more of a transition in your organizational process would help adapt the reader. Overall I enjoyed reading your blog and wish you the best of luck with the rest of the semester.

Directed Free Write/Page 443

I chose this as one of your greatest hits because this post has fantastic voice. Your ideas and opinions come through loud and clear without being overly opinionated. On top of the great writing in the post, the organization is perfect – you introduce the topic, orient the reader and then explain your views. Great job.

Prompt 1/Page 418

This post is a perfect example of good organization in writing. The explanation of materialism is genuine and the writing is easy for a reader to follow. You were able to use in-text citations accurately and they supported all of your claims but were not used excessively. You mentioned that you wrote your essay 3 on the topic of materialism and I’m glad you did because this is one of the better blog posts that I have read throughout the semester.

Strange Comparisons

I really enjoyed reading this post. You were able to take our assigned reading, interpret it and then clearly express your opposing view points. I also enjoyed that you aren’t afraid to say how you feel in your writing, you never sugarcoat what you mean to say and it really shows through in your writing. 

Week 12 Blog Reviews

Amity

We The People

This is a very well-written free write. There are a few spelling errors in your first paragraph that may trip up the reader. Also, a few of your sentences seem very long and run-on (paragraph 2, the last sentence). Other than these few editorial issues, you raise some interesting questions about our government. This could be developed so that you pinpoint your own political views more specifically but overall, this was an interesting piece that was easy to follow.

Buy Low and Sell High

I enjoyed reading this post because it flowed nicely and incorporated the text accurately. I would only suggest revising some of your organization – all three paragraphs seems to be talking about the same things just in a different way. This could be transformed in to a bigger writing piece by elaborating on both the specific social, economic and technological changes and then what theories and discoveries were found to help the field of finance.

Hilary

View of the Continuum

You did a great job of expressing your views of the political continuum without being too persuasive either way. This post was easy to follow and although you did not use any support from our text, your ideas were still clearly expressed. If you wanted to expand on this post you could research a political party that holds most of your same views and write about it.

For Those Who Work in Finance…

You decided to take a different approach on this topic than most of the rest of us. Instead of boring us with the history of the finance field (which we all read anyway), you took a different stance and told us some of the qualifications it takes to be in the finance field and why people chose this as a profession. I enjoyed reading this post because it was different, good job.

Directed Freewrite P. 455

Money has always been a central part to our society. Economics is talked about in relation to government, social class, peer groups, etc. Humans work to make money to support their families and take care of the necessities; food, water and shelter, but we are always looking for more money to take care of our wants; fancy cars and expensive clothes. People that ventured in to the discipline of finance want to better understand the science of money; they realized that other people may also be curious about their banking and investments.

The discipline of finance really started to grow after World War II. America had a huge growth of the work force due to women starting to work and the machinery and technology was growing at a rapid rate. Americans were making more money and needed to be educated about this new money. This is where finance comes in – scientist of finance set out to use advanced mathematics and risk formulas to aid the banking companies. Finance analyzes the variables that affect money and investments in order to uncover discrepancies in the banking process.

Because of the growth in the interest of finance, practitioners of this discipline were able to break their way in to academia; teaching a new wave of students the ropes about finance. The academic side of finance opened up new job opportunities and a whole new realm of economics. 

Cypherpunks

In Josh McHugh’s article, “Politics for the Really Cool”, he brings to light the growing revolution that is taking a stand against Big Government and Economics by supporting cryptography. “Cryptography is the science of scrambling messages so they cannot be read by prying eyes”(435). These “cypherpunks” embrace cryptography and are using it as tool to reform against our big government today. By supporting cryptography, these Libertarians are pursuing an economy that is free from the Big Brother. They are fighting for a market where their banking and investments are hidden from government and hold out hope that the government will respond by giving some slack to their reins that hold the economy where it is today.

Now, just like with everything else in our world, these political and economic views fall on a spectrum. The man from Hugh’s article, Sameer Parekh, seems to fall on a more extreme side of the spectrum. And the opposite side of that spectrum would be a belief that the government plays a delicate role in our economy and that role must be sustained to continue on this path of a Democratic government. So much for the buildup, but I’d like to choose a stance on the spectrum that falls somewhere in the middle.

The picture that is painted by the Libertarians is intriguing but also provokes some insecure feelings. I’d love to see the use of cryptography in America; we’d feel safer from the ever-seeing Big Brother and we’d feel the safety of controlling our own money but with rewards also comes consequences. Who’s going to regulate the cryptography software? How will the Jones’ family’s bank account be safe from criminals if the criminals are also enjoying the cryptic software? Libertarians wouldn’t want anyone to regulate any part of the economic system and the extremists seem to want anarchy and no government at all. I believe there needs to be some middle ground where both sides of the spectrum can come to a compromise.

Week 11 Blog Reviews

Amity:

P. 418 – 10/27

This post starts off really strong, you use your text quotes fantastically – they support your statements but I can still hear your voice coming through your writing. I really admire that because a lot of people can let the quotations overpower their writing and you feel like you’re not even reading original work. My only suggestion for this post would be to elaborate more (and I know that this is just a weekly assignment – not a rough draft or anything) – specifically on why “the Industrial Revolution and Capitalism paved the way”, this statement is general but I know that if you had the need to elaborate, you could.

Another Side of the Foreign Worker – 10/28

I loved, loved, loved this post. Clearly, you were able to do some research (again, not enough to overpower your own writing) and as a reader, I could tell that you understood what you were writing about. This post was informative but not overwhelming to me as a reader. It could have easily turned in to another boring writing piece about foreign workers but you drew upon your own experiences and laid it all out clearly to your reader. I don’t have any suggestions, this was great.

Hilary:

Materialism – 10/26

I enjoyed reading this post, it was very thorough and informative – I still would have been able to follow along if I had not read Twitchell’s article. The organization is great with an introduction, pros and cons but the last paragraph seems to get a little messy. The last paragraph should be used to wrap up your writing, even if it’s just sentence but in this post you open up new negative aspects to materialism. I like that you included the point about Christmas but adding a last, concluding paragraph would strengthen this post.

German Influence – 10/28

I also enjoyed reading this post, it was clear and to the point. You didn’t need any extra fluff to support your claims and I learned that Barbie was German first! Also, good job on relating the German influences back in to our economy – I feel like it could have easily been just a piece on the influences of Germany but you made sure to include the economic undertone and that really kept the reader focused on the “bigger picture”.