Though desire and its associated effects - lust, love,
aggression, ambition - are generally the purview of poets, that
hasn't stopped generations of thinkers from trying to explain it
scientifically (and pseudoscientifically). Can desire really be
described using the scientific method? Here are ten ways that
researchers have answered that question with a resounding "yes."
Photo by YURALAITS ALBERT via Shuterstock. 1. Psychoanalysis:
Desire is structured like a steam engine Though many
philosophers and writers addressed the nature of desire before
the rise of psychoanalysis in the nineteenth century, almost
none of them proposed to subject this intense human emotion to
the rigors of the scientific method. Sigmund Freud and his
colleagues, for all their failings, bravely set out to prove
that even our feelings could be studied rationally - and this
radical idea led directly to areas like neuroscience and
cognitive science today. Long before fMRI machines and self-help
books, Freud proposed that desire functions