Word: liebowitz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While these ideas might be perfect for late-night bull sessions, they have no grounding in reality. But they are just a sampling of the brazen assertions offered in two new books, The Chemistry of Love by Michael Liebowitz, a psychiatrist at Columbia, and Science and Moral Priority, by Roger W. Sperry, a psychobiologist from Cal Tech. In fact, it seems that these two scientists, who have had much success in the labs, have a rather inflated idea of what science can do. Both men have been blinded by their own successes into thinking that they can begin to solve...
However, both men go wrong in extending scientific speculation far beyond the bounds of scientific evidence. Liebowitz parlays his limited success in drug therapy into an apparent belief that the pleasures of romantic love are little different from those of recreational drugs. Sperry praises "science as the proven Number I method available for answering problems," and suggests that science and religion will join in "a new theology, one that would promote the values of conservation, renewable energy sources, and the like..." Both books are laughable--in their own dangerous...
...Chemistry of Love is often laughable in both its language and its ideas. Liebowitz writes badly and thinks sloppily. His work is filled with meaningless sentences such as "Along comes a somewhat attractive and friendly soul and whammo, our brains are hit with megadoses of 'attachment juice." His logic is no better. "Biologically," he writes, "it appears that we have evolved two distinct chemical systems for romance; one basically serves to bring people together and the other to keep them together." The only evidence that he offers for all this elaborate chemical apparatus is that we fall in love...
Stories plainly marked "Made in preoccupied New York" include Leonard Michaels' Robinson Crusoe Liebowitz, a frenetic piece of scatology turning on the inaccessibility of a toilet; Renata Adler's Brownstone, tartly amusing observations from a Manhattan building; and Woody Allen's brilliantly executed The Kugelmass Episode. In search of a love affair, an unhappily married humanities professor from City College hooks up with a magician with the power to transport people into the novel of their choice. Professor Kugelmass chooses Madame Bovary and makes repeated visits to Yonville for trysts with Emma. The miracle has side effects...