"If you try to sever science from e.g. parental love, you aren't just denying cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. You're also denying Martine Rothblatt's founding of United Therapeutics to seek a cure for her daughter's pulmonary hypertension. (Successfully, I might add.) Science is legitimately related, one way or another, to just about every important facet of human existence."
Well, no. No one in their right mind makes the argument that "scientists can't love their children" or "a scientific enterprise cannot be mot... (read more)
Not yet, anyway, at least with regards to the specific mental mechanisms that create the feeling. If you take a "ten thousand foot high" view of the subject, evolution explains love perfectly - love is what drives humans to be monogamous (though not perfectly, for various reasons) and it also drives us to protect our young. This is beneficial for the survival of the species, and it is one of the reasons humans are arguably the most successful creatures on the planet in terms of survival. Nearly every mammal exhibits similar behavior, with variations depending on their specific adaptations, so it is quite reasonable to say they likely experience a feeling very much like what we call love.
That's the point. There is nothing that science is not involved with, and there are researchers right now attempting to find why we love (and there has been a lot of progress in the area - I've seen some really cool documentaries on the subject).
"If you try to sever science from e.g. parental love, you aren't just denying cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. You're also denying Martine Rothblatt's founding of United Therapeutics to seek a cure for her daughter's pulmonary hypertension. (Successfully, I might add.) Science is legitimately related, one way or another, to just about every important facet of human existence."
Well, no. No one in their right mind makes the argument that "scientists can't love their children" or "a scientific enterprise cannot be mot... (read more)