WHEN A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY TURNS LIGHTLY TO -- DOPAMINE!!

OK, the correct saying is: "In the spring when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." But, come on, that's so ante-diluvian! Look, today's age of science has cracked those old codes. Like the Bubonic Plague, polio, measles and hopefully soon cancer. God bless science.

On the other hand....

I'm not sure I want neurobiologists to crack this code we herald as: Love. I mean, think of all the poets, painters, composers and Hallmark Card employees who would get cast aside in a whirl of Dopamine. Oh yes, yes, the studies have confirmed this little sexy neurotransmitter is what makes you attracted to me, me to you, and hence the great Darwinian explanation of human existence.

Some of you will snarl that I sound like an Evangelical letter from deep in the heart of anti-Darwin Kansas. No -- you're thinking of Dorothy. This is me, and hundreds of millions of other me's traveling the earth in search of meaning, purpose and what once upon a time we sentimentally called Love.

However, the real struggle here is not between Sentimentality and Science. The struggle is to still find room in our amazing scientific age for enough sentimentality to keep us human. I prefer not to be an "informed man" if it means all I find is Dopamine, Norepinephrine and Serotonin in my feelings and passions for the woman I have loved for over 60 post-Darwinian years.

Hey, even Charles' devoted wife had her doubts about his insistence all species are a product of such evolutionary determinants as survival, satisfaction and procreation. And as far as the record shows, Charles never rebuffed that kind of love from her in their own marriage.

Richard Doty, director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania, concludes kissing has a lot to do with getting close enough to expecience the bodily smells of a potential partner. You know, like a Warthog. Also, that when I first looked at Joan I was probably studying her pelvic possibilities for bearing my children. And that evolution had built into us the urge-to-merge.

This has to stop! I'm not against learning about my physical self, but not at the expense of my metaphysical self. I choose -- with all the Dopamine at my command -- to believe that Joan and I have not mated like some horse farm system trying to breed another Seabiscuit. If I sound angry, yes I suppose I am. I also suppose some of these researchers may be like the fella who knew 213 ways of making love, but never knew a woman.