Dupré, John - Human Nature and the Limits of Science

While working on this book I happened to turn on the third instalment of a television series on human hormones. The official topic of this episode was Love. In between images of chemical clouds bubbling out of glands and diffusing through the body, the programme traced the effects of hormones on sexual differentiation in utero and in puberty. Distinguished scientists reported the exciting and sometimes surprising results of our recent ability to measure the levels of hormones in bodies, and correlations between these levels and the emotional states of the subjects were noted. As different behavioural tendencies were shown to develop in males and females, evolutionists informed us about the functions these might have served for our Stone Age ancestors. Reaching the official topic of love, we were taught to distinguish its various phases—infatuation, obsession, companionship—and their hormonal correlates. Magnetic Resonance Imaging of obsessed lovers revealed similarities between their brain activities and those of the mentally disturbed, providing, apparently, scientific evidence that love is indeed a form of madness. Later, we learned that whether male voles remained faithful to their partners or indulged in untrammelled promiscuity depended on the presence of specific hormones, and we were invited to speculate as to whether similar mechanisms might operate in humans. And so on. Although much of this work was admitted to be at a somewhat speculative stage, the scientists involved expressed no reservations about the possibility that love might turn out to be caused by, or just to be—such ontological subtleties were not addressed—a sequence of hormonal surges; nor did members of the public asked to comment on some of these scientific claims, though some expressed the view that the topic of love should be left to poets, and that these scientific facts were better left unknown.

This programme illustrates the hold on our culture of what I call scientism, an exaggerated and often distorted conception of what science can be expected to do or explain for us.