Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire’s inaugural so-called “Golden Fleece Awards”, which ran from 1975 to 1988, was an award to NSF funded research on the science of love, which Proxmire deemed as fleece or excessive wastefulness of public money. [7] |
“I object to this not only because no one—not even the National Science Foundation—can argue that falling in love is a science; not only because I'm sure that even if they spend $84 million or $84 billion they wouldn't get an answer that anyone would believe. I'm also against it because I don't want the answer. I believe that 200 million other Americans want to leave some things in life a mystery, and right on top of the things we don't want to know is why a man falls in love with a woman and vice versa. So NSF—get out of the love racket. Leave that to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Irving Berlin. Here if anywhere Alexander Pope was right when he observed: ‘if ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.’”
“No one can argue that falling in love is a science. The impact of love is a very subjective, nonquantifiable subject matter. Love is simply a mystery.”
“It is odd that the notion that attraction, particularly such intense forms as romantic love, are simply ‘non-quantifiable’ has lingered to the present day. It seems especially strange when we consider that each of us, every day and in a variety of ways, manages to quantify our attraction to others and measure their attraction to us.”
“The study of love is better left to poets and mystics, to Irving Berlin, to thousands of high school and college bull sessions.”— William Proxmire (1975), on NSF grant to study love, quoted in NY Times obituary (2005) [5]
“Senator Proxmire was trying to turn back the clock by criticizing valid research on love. Proxmire himself has suffered marital separation. I would think that he especially would want to understand about love being the basis for the marriage contract.”— Ellen Berscheid (1975), “Proxmire Barb Goes Unloved” [6]