The Evolution of Love

The Evolution of Love
Students of evolution, especially those who study the evolution of love, are faced with a not so easy dilemma of values.

Western philosophy glorifies science and the scientific way of reaching conclusions, based on the hard facts of quantification, measurement and microscopic viewing.

But the stories of evolution are not always of the kind that can be placed under a microscope, especially not those concerning the evolution of the special human traits that enable us to love.

These have not left behind fossils in some geological strata. And yet these are the very questions we so urgently want to ask and to find the answers to.

The same right we take when we suggest an evolutionary of explanation of a physical characteristic, such as an organ, a tail, an eye, or an ear, is valid when we try to find the evolutionary explanation of feeling, behavior, the brain and even consciousness and love.

The task is difficult, but those who adhere only to what can be placed under a microscope are falling into the same trap as does the drunk who searches for his lost key under the street lamp.

If the key is there, that is all well and good. But there is a big chance that the key is elsewhere, somewhere in the dark space surrounding the lamp, the drunk will do better to search there as well.

Quite probably, the keys to many evolutionary stories are still in the dark spaces, where we ought to try and look, although we might at times found ourselves telling tales that include quite a bit of speculation.

The same is true about the evolution of love. Love is one of the most intense, dramatic, powerful experiences known to humans.

It is sometimes perceived as stronger than life itself. “Love is as fierce as death” says the Songs of Songs, “Omnia Vincit Amor.”

Our thirst for love is so intense that it seems as if our entire lives are about what happens to us during the restless pursuit of love.

In discussing the evolution of love, we are obliged to make two assumptions. The first states that the talent to love and to be loved, as well as the need to seek love, is part of human genetic equipment and is passed on from parents to children via heredity.

The second states that this talents appeared somewhere along the lines of life on earth and has been undergoing changes since then by natural selection.

These changes are what brought love in humans to such intensity.
The Evolution of Love