Science and love, music, art, etc. (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Friday, February 13, 2009, 08:44 (5559 days ago) @ George Jelliss

I expressed my doubts as to whether science could ever explain the nature of love, the impact of music, or the origin of ideas. George wrote that "science already has reliable answers about such subjects as love, musical appreciation, and creative thought", and he has kindly provided us with a number of websites to support his claim. - I appreciate the time and effort involved in hunting for such sites, but I think you had probably already anticipated the difficulty when you diluted my original statement. Science does indeed have some reliable answers, but they are not the answers to the questions I am asking. - On love, we learn that "there are a lot of chemicals racing around your brain and body when you're in love". These include pheromones, dopamine, norepinephine and serotonin. Incidentally, we are not naturally monogamous, whereas prairie voles are. I thought you might like to know that. Researchers have been able "to pin down several regions of the brain that appear to be involved in intense romantic feelings". Such findings tell us nothing whatsoever about the nature of love. They tell us the chemical reactions that take place once the mind triggers the mechanism ... the effect, not the cause. Chemicals are released and different areas of the brain are involved in most human activities, but we don't, for instance, make the most important speech of our lives because the adrenalin is pumping, and it's not the heart attack that causes the stress. - "Psychologists and researchers have proposed a number of different theories of love." The proposal of different theories does not, in my book, constitute "reliable answers". - It's much the same with the psychology of music. The list of themes studied at Sheffield includes "social psychology of musical participation", "music in the workplace", "social and therapeutic functions of singing", and one of the other sites you recommended talks of "the value of music in everyday life". But although it's taken for granted that music has certain effects, there's no mention anywhere of a course explaining why meaningless sounds have such a profound impact on people. This is not meant as a criticism, because obviously I have not attended the course. It's simply an observation that the headings have nothing to do with the subject I have raised. - Nor do the sites have anything to say about the origin of ideas. "Doodling allows the subconscious to render in [sic] symbolic expression", which tells us only that the subconscious is a source of ideas. That's not an explanation. The journal on "Interdisciplinarity" sounds interesting, though again the various headings don't link up with origins. The third site is a joke. The author asks: "How does the creative process work?" And here is his reliable, scientific answer: "My research suggests that many forces act simultaneously on the neural determinants of many different behaviors and that novel behavior is the result of this complex and dynamic process." No further explanation is given, but he does tell us how one day a catchy title "popped into" his head, and he gives us this excellent advice: "To boost your creative output, capture your new ideas as they occur." On this evidence, I can only repeat that science has not come up with any reliable explanation as to why ideas "occur" or "pop", why music has the impact it does, why love binds people even to the extent that one will die for another. George says all this is "only the tip of a growing iceberg". These references barely even touch the tip. - We should not lose sight of the starting-point of this discussion, though I think you were right to give such subjects a thread of their own. I was drawing an analogy between all these real, and so far unexplained, phenomena and certain other experiences under the heading of "paranormal" (though I don't like the term), which may well be just as real. Of course, I have no problem with your personal belief that science "already has reliable answers". I hope, however, that it will be clear to you why, with the current colossal gaps in our knowledge, it's a belief that I can't share.