
A segment from the cover page of Libb Thims Apr 2013 lecture “A Guidemap to Human Chemical Thermodynamics: Goethe's Elective Affinities to Human Free Energies”, to Northern Illinois University mechanical engineering students, to quickly illustrate that “light”, whether in the form of a magnifying glass making focused heat, or the visual impression of a beautiful object going into the receptors of the eyes of a human, can act as “spark” to trigger the activation energy barrier of the given reaction, whether hydrocarbon molecules, of dry leaves, combusting with oxygen molecules in the air, or love at first sight, between two human molecules, starved for love, of a human chemical reaction.

A segment from the cover page of Libb Thims Apr 2013 lecture “A Guidemap to Human Chemical Thermodynamics: Goethe's Elective Affinities to Human Free Energies”, to Northern Illinois University mechanical engineering students, to quickly illustrate that “light”, whether in the form of a magnifying glass making focused heat, or the visual impression of a beautiful object going into the receptors of the eyes of a human, can act as “spark” to trigger the activation energy barrier of the given reaction, whether hydrocarbon molecules, of dry leaves, combusting with oxygen molecules in the air, or love at first sight, between two human molecules, starved for love, of a human chemical reaction.

In phenomena, love at first sight is the process in which one or two people fall in love with each other instantaneously at first visual contact. Statistically, about 67 percent of people believe in love at first sight and 20% fall in love at first sight and marry that person. [1] One of the first detailed studies of this phenomenon was conducted by American market research Earl Naumann and published in his 2001 book Love at First Sight - the Stories and Science behind Instant Attraction. [2] A related, albeit less common, phrase is "love at first smell", in which the smell of someone triggers instant attraction. [3]

Overview
One of the first studies done on the phenomenon of “love at first sight”, published in 1970, found that in a survey of 679 men and women, 30% reported to have fallen in love at an initial glance. [4] A recent 1999 survey of one-hundred American couples, however, found that only 11% of men and women had fallen in love the moment they set their eyes on each other. [5]

In the late 1990s, American market research Earl Naumann interviewed 1,495 people across American, by phone, whose answers to questions on their views about “love at first sight” were tape recorded, documented, and statistically analyzed. [1] On this topic, according to Naumann, as we perceive our environment, and the inclusive “potentials” in that environment, through our senses of sight, smell, touch, and hearing that it is sensor information that triggers the chemical reaction of love. [6]

The results of his studies found that nearly two-thirds of the population believes in love at first sight; that of believers, more than half have experienced it; that 55% of those who experience love at first sight married the object of their affection and that three-quarters of those who married as a result of love at first sight have stayed married well over the national average. In a nutshell, this means, approximately, that 20% of people will fall in love at first sight, solely by the operation of a visual field particle stimulus (photons), marry that person, and that of those people, three-fourths will stay married better than the national average.

Subsequently, the visual stimulus of sight, as is the case with most sensor information, will enter the brain system through the optic nerve and go to the thalamus (the brain's translator); these messages, in turn, are then simultaneously sent to the neocortex (the thinking part) and the amygdala (the place where deep memories and fear are stored). The amygdala then sends messages to the hypothalamus (the part that connects the nervous system to the endocrine system), which then directs the pituitary gland to release the appropriate hormones and neurochemicals.

In short, love at first sight is translated by the thalamus as a "desired human chemical reaction", a important message which is then sent to the amygdala (the core memory center), resulting in the flooding of endorphins and other neurochemicals, such as oxytocin, vasopressin, and dopamine, in the emotional center of the brain, the “limbic system”. As such, according to Naumann’s findings, “the implication is that there is not just a single chemical reaction taking place in our bodies … there are a whole series of reactions that result in the emotion of love."


Results from a 2013 survey of American high school students, which found that 62 percent believe in the concept of love at first sight. [7]

Results from a 2013 survey of American high school students, which found that 62 percent believe in the concept of love at first sight. [7]

Soul mates
Modern belief in the concept of a "soul mate" match, a theory tracing to dialogue in Plato’s The Symposium, in which he has Aristophanes present a story about soul mates; a theory that, supposedly, Goethe incorporated into the Edward/Ottilie paring via his alternate headache coincidence descriptions, in Elective Affinities. [7]

According to this logic, then, when two split souls re-encountered each other again for the first time since their original split they would fall in love at first sight, so to reunite with their other soul mate half.

References
1. Fisher, Helen. (1992). Anatomy of Love - a Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why we Stray (section: "Love at First Sight", pgs. 49-50). Fawcett Columbine.
2. (a) Naumann, Earl. (2001). Love at First Sight – the Stories and Science Behind Instant Attraction, (ch. 2: “The Chemistry of Love”, pgs. 23-42 [35]). Naperville, IL: Casablanca Press.
(b) Earl Naumann – the Science behind Instant Attraction.
3. Fisher, Helen. (2004). Why We Love - the Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, (section: "Love at First Sight", pgs. 41-42; section: "Love at First Smell", pg. 43). New York: Henry Holt and Co.
4. Kanin, E.J., Davidson, K.R., and Scheck, S.R. (1970). “A research note on male-female differentials in the experience of heterosexual love”. Journal of Sex Research 6(1): 64-72.
5. Pines, A.M. (1999). Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose. New York: Routledge.
6. See: Love - the chemical reaction.
7. Stannard, Sydnee. (2013). “Together Forever: High School Relationships”, Knight Life, 53(3):11.
8. Soulmate – Wikipedia.

External links
● Love at first sight – Wikipedia.