Here’s my candidate for the most interesting article of the week: “Loves Me, Loves Me Not (Do the Math)” By Steven Strogatz, in the Wild Side blog on the NY Times.
Dr. Strogatz, a mathematician noted for his work in chaos theory and the dynamics of complex, non-linear systems, wrote about how certain math equations and concepts help to describe what he had experienced as a young man in love. Well, there’s a lot of overlap between love and chaos,and if any scientists are ever going to have anything to say about romantic love, it’s going to be the chaos experts. The psychologists have been trying for years, but without much luck; only the math people who search for (and find) hidden patterns within the crazy swirls of reality (e.g. stock prices, political campaigns, virus infections, insect colonies, etc.) can even get close to what courtship and romantic love involve.
Most people are still pretty cynical as to whether math and science can really tell us anything about love and relationships. And ultimately they’re right; love is ultimately an experiential thing. The realm of science, as broad and powerful as it is, stops just short of being able to fully explain an experience. This reality is at the heart of the “consciousness problem” in the field of “philosophy of mind”. You can look up the comments that were sent in response to Dr. Strogatz’s article, and more than half of them are rather dismissive about what the professor seems to be attempting. Many of these commentors try to pass him off with a bit of humor (the good doctor himself seemed to end the article on a tongue-in-cheek note). Emily Bobrow on The Economist’s “More Intelligent Life” blog does about the same.
As with the mind, science can only go so far in talking about love. But that still might be much fartherer than most people think. A few years ago, a book came out called “The Mathematics of Marriage”, based on a long-term study done of married couples led by Dr. John M. Gottman. Dr. Gottman and his team came up with a mathematical system to describe marital dynamics, based on chaos theory (and more specifically, “catastrophe theory”), and applied these equations across a sample of married couples over time. These couples were recorded talking to each other on video, and were then analyzed and classified based on the types of emotional responses being exchanged by man and wife during their conversations. The bottom line: if Dr. Gottman analyzed an hour of a husband and wife talking, he predicted with 95% accuracy whether a couple would be married 15 years later. And if he watched a couple for just 15 minutes, his success rate only dropped to 90%. Hmm, not bad if true (I didn’t read the book or the study, so I can’t really judge it).
SO, perhaps science will never tell us exactly why we exist in this universe as feeling beings. But it already can tell us a lot about how we obtain those feelings and what we do in response to them. And in the future it will be able to do this better and better (although it will never be able to predict any one individual’s course of actions in detail for long periods of time; there’s too much “chaos” and not enough information practically available about complex human relationships, just as the chaos in the atmosphere and limitations on weather data collection prevent us from accurately predicting the weather too far in advance). As with any scientific tool, it will be up to us whether we use this for good or for evil. As with most significant scientific tools from the past two or three centuries, the potential goodness will be VERY good, and the potential evil will be VERY evil.
PS, here’s another blog comment on the Strogatz column by Rick Nelson, a fellow engineering guy.
And here’s an article from 2003 in Slate about Dr. Gottman’s study and his book:
Love by the Numbers; Can a few differential equations describe the course of a marriage? by Jordan Ellenber.
PPS, On a different but familiar topic, i.e. General Motors; my favorite quote for the week is from Judge Richard Posner’s blog on The Atlantic web site: “We should be concerned lest GM become a kind of economic Vietnam”.
PPPS: I see that Obama is going to appoint a “Ciber Czar”, after recently appointing an “Auto Czar” (Ed Montgomery). OK, we know what a “czar” is (a.k.a. “tsar”, a Russian dictator from the 16th thru early 20th Century), but where did that word originate? In ancient Rome, of course; czar is just a Russian corruption of “Caesar”, reflecting the old Russian myth that it had inherited the legacy of the Roman Empire when Russia converted to Eastern Christianity (around 1000 AD), followed by the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Turks (pretty much done by 1350, but with Constantinople holding out until 1453). Hopefully, President Obama is not going to appoint himself “Casear of the Czars”.
Jim,
Now I see why so many marriages end in divorce. Our society (prompted by these writers—or are they merely modeling society?) is caught in the fallacy of love as manipulation of the other person.
I carefully read Strogatz’ article and the other articles. What struck me about most of them is that each and every one of them starts with the supposition that “love” is manipulation of the other person. “I’ll do this, then you’ll do that; then I’ll do something else, then you’ll do this other thing.” Egad! Is all I can say.
I do think that Ellenberg came closer to the truth of relationships. I do agree with Ellenberg that the more “negative emotion a husband directs at his wife undoubtedly contributes to changes in her reciprocal feelings.” But I have to say that I wonder that in the examples given it is the MEN who are either manipulative or negative. Are there not some women who are/can be manipulative and/or negative toward the men they purport to “love”? And Ellenberg’s comment that “a marriage is less likely to succeed when the spouses are individually more prone toward negative emotional expression” found me thinking: DUH!!? Must one be an engineer and be able to do differential equations (which I admit I am sorely unable to do) to figure that point out?
And another item: Do we not call purely manipulative people sociopaths? Or even, when the person is “off-the-wall” enuf (excuse the lack of proper psychological terminology), psychopaths?
I must say I found the “Creativity and the mathematics of marriage and work” at least a little closer to the point—yet strangely enough, not so much the article as the Comment by “Tanya Bamford” who noted: “In relationships, whether marital or business, each participant needs to be cognizant of their actions and their impact on others.” FINALLY! Someone with some real insight. I say: THANK YOU!
I am not so naïve as to think, however, that there are not SOME people around who treat those with whom they have relationships in a manipulative way; I would say those people deserve what they get in relationships.
What happened to taking people as they are? What happened to (and here I realize I am hopelessly standing alone) the concept that when one loves someone, one accepts that person’s problems as one’s own?
And on your other two points: As to GM becoming “a kind of economic Vietnam”: I’ve tho’t that about the bail out of the banks. Such a result seems more likely with the banks than with GM. But who knows.
And as regards Obama as “Ceasar of the Czars”: Have we not already had come very close to such a situation in the previous administration who/which (perhaps more Cheney than GWB) flagrantly flouted the Constitution in so many ways?
MCS
Comment by MCS — June 3, 2009 @ 8:09 pm
Jim,
Now I see why so many marriages end in divorce. Our society (prompted by these writers—or are they merely modeling society?) is caught in the fallacy of love as manipulation of the other person.
I carefully read Strogatz’ article and the other articles. What struck me about most of them is that each and every one of them starts with the supposition that “love” is manipulation of the other person. “I’ll do this, then you’ll do that; then I’ll do something else, then you’ll do this other thing.” Egad! Is all I can say.
I do think that Ellenberg came closer to the truth of relationships. I do agree with Ellenberg that the more “negative emotion a husband directs at his wife undoubtedly contributes to changes in her reciprocal feelings.” But I have to say that I wonder that in the examples given it is the MEN who are either manipulative or negative. Are there not some women who are/can be manipulative and/or negative toward the men they purport to “love”? And Ellenberg’s comment that “a marriage is less likely to succeed when the spouses are individually more prone toward negative emotional expression” found me thinking: DUH!!? Must one be an engineer and be able to do differential equations (which I admit I am sorely unable to do) to figure that point out?
And another item: Do we not call purely manipulative people sociopaths? Or even, when the person is “off-the-wall” enuf (excuse the lack of proper psychological terminology), psychopaths?
I must say I found the “Creativity and the mathematics of marriage and work” at least a little closer to the point—yet strangely enough, not so much the article as the Comment by “Tanya Bamford” who noted: “In relationships, whether marital or business, each participant needs to be cognizant of their actions and their impact on others.” FINALLY! Someone with some real insight. I say: THANK YOU!
I am not so naïve as to think, however, that there are not SOME people around who treat those with whom they have relationships in a manipulative way; I would say those people deserve what they get in relationships.
What happened to taking people as they are? What happened to (and here I realize I am hopelessly standing alone) the concept that when one loves someone, one accepts that person’s problems as one’s own?
And on your other two points: As to GM becoming “a kind of economic Vietnam”: I’ve tho’t that about the bail out of the banks. Such a result seems more likely with the banks than with GM. But who knows.
And as regards Obama as “Ceasar of the Czars”: Have we not already had come very close to such a situation in the previous administration who/which (perhaps more Cheney than GWB) flagrantly flouted the Constitution in so many ways?
MCS
Comment by MCS — June 3, 2009 @ 8:09 pm