Time, January 17, 2008
There’s nothing like being in love. Minutes seem to creep and fly at the same time. We get lost on the way home, thinking of the next date. Music cries out to us alone, and the full moon winks our way. Long after other memories fade, the recollection of love lingers. It’s pure magic. Or at least that’s what we like to tell ourselves.
For all the advances scientists are making deciphering the biology of love–for all the circuitry appearing in brain scans and the chemistry emerging in blood and scent studies–we still want to believe that science will never tame romance. We’re sure that it will always remain utterly separate from the cells and organs and reflexes that biologists study. And indeed, how could anything that so moves us to poetry and song be so reducible to behavior and chemicals?