July 22, 2014 at 6:36 P.M. I will attempt to create another blog when I reach 270 posts at "Against Dark Arts." Efforts will probably be made to prevent me from creating another blog. I will struggle to do so, every day, in order to continue writing. No doubt my watch has been sent, mistakenly, to the Gaza strip in Israel. ("Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.")
John Allen Paulos, "The Advanced Metrics of Attraction," The New York Times, July 15, 2014, p. D3.
Robert C. Solomon, Love: Emotion, Myth, and Metaphor (New York: Prometheus, 1990).
Sebastian Faulks, On Green Dolphin Street (New York: Vintage International, 2001).
Emma Darwin, The Mathematics of Love (New York & London: Harper, 2006).
John Allen Paulos is a mathematician who writes well about numbers, but not necessarily with great understanding or subtlety about philosophical issues, or the erotic lives of persons.
After reading a book on the subject of romantic love and the mysteries of love's intoxication, Mr. Paulos pondered the ambiguities of "attraction."
"Attraction" is an experience that is undefined by this mathematician and amateur philosopher who attempts, nevertheless, a "statistical expression" of the essence of this undefined phenomenon of attraction that is equated with a "crush."
A "crush," presumably, refers to human beings feeling romantic interest in one another. The words "attachment" and "crush" are used as synonyms (or as alternative terms) in several sentences by Mr. Paulos.
Having written an essay about a concept which is undefined, "attachment," Mr. Paulos introduces a second concept which is also undefined, "crush." This is not very helpful.
The word "erotic" is not used in this essay nor is the word "love" found in the article. Thus, "attraction" could refer to the mutual appeal of meteors or centipedes.
What kind of attraction is involved in this proposed statistical reduction?
Mr. Paulos does not know the answer to this question. He cannot say what kind of attraction will be captured in his formula. Indeed, the "reduction" has been so successful (even before it has taken place) that the thing being reduced has disappeared entirely due to the initial imprecision in terminology.
If you set out to reduce nothing to less than nothing, you may be sure that nothing from nothing will leave you with nothing, even without "Bayes' Theorem." This man teaches at MIT.
No doubt Mrs. Paulos has offered a statistical reduction of divorce to the following formula: "me minus you = I get the car and house while you get your math books."
I must admit that, on this occasion, analytical philosophy's discipline and strictures concerning clarity and rigor do come in handy:
" ... attraction [what's that?] can cascade into exultation but, alas, gradually dissolve into disillusionment and a slow vanishing of the mirage."
Well, if it is a "mirage" to begin with not much "vanishing" will be necessary for this "mirage" to disappear or become unreal. An attraction between persons can be very real indeed, not a mirage, without becoming a romantic crush let alone a deep and lasting love. Much depends on the type of attraction at issue.
Important definitions and distinctions need to be introduced into any analysis and discussion of attraction in order for the commentary or theory about attraction to be meaningful, to say nothing of achieving philosophical rigor or insight about what brings people together.
Alternatively, the mathematical formulas and theories are meaningless from the outset because they are not applied to anything substantial and real like the "little lady at home." Right, Professor Paulos? ("David Stove and the Intellectual Capacity of Women" and "Nice Babies and Bad Psychologists.")
One may be "attracted" to a person who is intellectually stimulating or intriguing, without that person also being physically attractive or sexually desirable, or vice versa, and sometimes a person is absolutely magnetic because of a particular quality of genius that has nothing to do with romantic appeal.
One may find emotional responses to moral beauty leading to genuine love, apart from erotic appeal, as a result of what may initially have been only a charming smile or a unique sparkle in the eyes. The Troubadors sang of "love's call" which was distinct from and sometimes opposed to lust.
Part of the problem with Mr. Paulos' essay -- which manages to say absolutely nothing that is meaningful to me -- is the confusion in the subject matter that may be misinterpreted to contribute to the general skepticism about love that, sadly, is quite common today.
F.H. Bradley defined metaphysics as the "search in a darkened room for a black cat that may not be there."
Perhaps efforts to define "attraction" are a similarly Quixotic venture when the specific kind of attraction to be understood or transformed into a formula is unspecified.
Do we seek essential or ostensive definition in this matter, Mr. Paulos? Mr. Paulos says, enigmatically:
"Let us begin by imagining a person to be an assembly of traits."
Is a person an assembly of traits? Isn't everything an assembly of traits or qualities? Doesn't a theorist have to do a little better than this in defining relevant characteristics of persons in terms of what is "attractive" or "attracts" persons to other persons in order to write an essay with an actual subject? ("What is Law?")
If we begin from an understanding of persons as "social animals" (Aristotle) that makes them necessarily moral and political "creatures" ("creatures" implies created by the way), animals with a need for love or even requiring the presence of others in their lives to be healthy, or to understand themselves in relation to others of their kind, animals seeking out the qualities in others that reflect their inner lives and/or "lacks" (Sartre), then the notion of a gravity-like "pull" exerted by some persons upon other persons becomes a bit more precise. ("The Galatea Scenario and the Mind/Body Problem.")
"Evidence" of special attractiveness may be relevant not to attraction itself, as a quality, but to different relationships resulting from, as it were, an initial "big bang-like" appeal (attraction?) felt from another locus of desire and feeling called a "person."
What "attraction" is depends on what it does in different contexts. What follows from attraction may be friendship; a Platonic crush; passionate sexual relations; life-long and profound love; fleeting interest; and/or eventual revulsion.
In the absence of clarity about how the concept of "attraction" is used, however, Mr. Paulos' discussion will be utterly worthless in deciding upon the "mathematical laws" of attraction or anything else. Seeking a formula for attraction is probably absurd. Some experiences may not be amenable to mathematical reduction.
The foregoing conclusion may have been the author's' point in writing this essay and is certainly the only possible conclusion for the reader. Attraction can ...
" ... resemble a kind of terror, or an illness marked by a fever, loss of appetite, shaky knees, nervous twittering and a certain looseness in the brain and bowels. [How alarming!] It is romantic love that as the Spanish philosopher [Jose] Ortega y Gasset describes it, 'is a state of mental misery which has a restricting, impoverishing [that's for sure!] and paralyzing effect upon development of consciousness.' And yet we not only enjoy this but we consider it the highest experience of all. (Isn't this odd?) It is romantic love for which men and women wreck careers and abandon families and obligations, which provides plots for soaps and Operas, which Plato called a kind of madness and which so infuriated St. Paul, which inspired Shakespeare if not also Dante[,] and led to the downfall of Antony, Juliet, Romeo, Samson, Emma Bovary and King Kong."
Robert C. Solomon, Love: Emotion, Myth, and Metaphor, p. xx.
