By its very nature, love is an irrational and capricious
emotion. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines love twelve different ways
(thirteen if you count the tennis term), and there have been countless attempts
made by poets, musicians, philosophers, and literary figures to distill and
define the essence of this powerful emotion.
At first thought, love appears to be too complex and ambiguous to define
in a scientific manner. As Professor Le
mentioned, social scientists do not attempt to operationalize complex emotions
like love in their entirety. For example, by demonstrating love-directed
behavior in one instance is a study able to be generalized to other