The love thought experiment, first conceived by German polymath Johann Goethe in 1808, depicted above, refers to the situation wherein one attempts to intelligently "choose" who to marry from multiple possible mates, or the repercussions resulting therein, when one is simultaneously in love with multiple people, the result of which one is forced to turn to physical chemistry or chemical thermodynamics to study the way in which atoms and molecules react and the scaling up of this to human-human interactions. |
See main: Goethe love thought experimentIn the middle of 1808, German polymath Johann Goethe, a few months before he met Napoleon (Oct 2), he had started writing a story called “The Renouncers”, which, according to one of Goethe’s assistants, was about a hero simultaneously in love with four women; the synopsis of which, in Goethe’s view, was that:
“Each in her own way is lovable; whichever one he is drawn to in the mood of the moment, she alone is lovable.”
“Is it not for want of an attractive virtue [chemical affinity], between the parts of each, that quick-silver (☿)(Hg) will NOT mix with: antimony (♁)(Sb), lead (♄)(Pb), or iron (♂)(Fe); and by a weak attraction, that quick-silver (☿)(Hg) and copper (♀)(Cu) WILL mix, with difficult; and from a strong attraction, that quicksilver (☿)(Hg) WILL mix readily with tin ( ♃)(Sn)?”
“Is it not for want of an attractive virtue [chemical affinity], between the parts of each, that Edward will NOT mix with Luciane, homeless people, or elderly; and by a weak attraction, that Edward and Charlotte WILL mix, with difficult; and from a strong attraction, that Edward WILL mix readily with Ottilie?”
“Why, Claude wonders, should he fall for Mary rather than some other girl who would be equally suitable and equally attractive? Is love just the chance collision of two people who are, as the saying goes, in the right place at the right time—a kind of lucky hit in the dark? ‘Juxtaposition’, within the frame of Amours, fits into two sets of metaphors. The first of these is chemical and has to do with the concept of elective affinities: the idea that elements having inherent tendencies to form combinations and that they will combine and recombine according to these tendencies when placed in solution with each other. Goethe had explored the social and sexual implications of the concept in his novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809), a work that obviously influenced Clough’s reflections on the subject of Amours. [4]. Goethe’s novel is really more of a thought experiment about enlightenment than anything else. In it, a hyperrational couple invite into their home a pair of outsiders, only to discover that the foreign elements bring with them dangerous forces of elective affinity. The four main characters find themselves reshuffling their relations according to these affinities, and the results are devastating.”
A depiction of the so-called "Henry Adams love triangle", in 1885, wherein, seemingly, the introduction of molecule B (Elizabeth Cameron), into the reaction system of Henry Adams, seems to have worked to precipitate the dissolution or detachment of molecule A (Clover Adams) from the AC marriage bond (Henry-Clover relationship), via the action of suicide, on 6 Dec 1885. |
“I shall dedicate my next poem to you. I shall have you carved over the arch of my stone doorway. I shall publish your volume of extracts with your portrait on the title page. None of these methods can fully express the extent to which I am yours.”
“Social chemistry—the mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules—is a science yet to be created, for the fact is my daily study and only satisfaction in life.”
“I have run my head hard up against a form of mathematics that grinds my brains out. I flounder like a sculpin in the mud. It is called the ‘law of phases’, and was invented at Yale. No one shall persuade me that I am not a phase.”
See main: Thims thought experimentIn circa 1992-1993, American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims, the modern intellectual embodiment in mindset of Goethe + Adams + Pareto, in regards to human chemistry, in an attempt to figure out how to go about choosing who to marry (as this is supposed to be a step, according to cultural precedence, in the colloquial standard model of existence), as a freshman pre-engineering student, Thims made an excel-style spread sheet table of the top nineteen girlfriends, whom he could potentially marry, listing each person on the horizontal and listing a range of point ranked attributes, qualities, or factors on the vertical, such as “grandmother would like her”, spontaneity, fun factor, physical attraction factors, mental attraction factors, repulsive factors, etc., in an attempt to get a numerical "marriage quality value" for each girlfriend:
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A + B → A≡B (human chemical bond formation) (Libb Thims, 2003)
A + B → AB (Surya Pati, 2009)
“A video was made by the authors on the same concept with the title as “A strange thing called love”. The plot of this video is that a man falls in love with nine girls and that day comes when he is supposed to make a decision on choosing ‘the one’. Surprisingly in the early 1800s, Johann Goethe published a book named Elective Affinities based on a similar concept of love and marriage relations among two couples. It is a pure coincidence and the current authors actually didn’t know about it until they started preparing this article.”
Left: German-born American Albert Einstein's famous circa 1928 poster quote query on the physics and chemistry of love (see: Einstein on love). Right: A depiction of the American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims circa 1995 version of the love thought experiment, according to which each mate selection reaction, between one man M and four different females F: M + F1 → M≡F1 are each quantified by a free energy change, ΔGi, and hence yield a reading of the predicted spontaneity, feasibility, or naturalness of each potential relationship reaction |