Why Do We Love?

Gresham College

April 22

Untold millions of words have been written about love. It is a unifying theme of music, stories and poetry across all human cultures, and yet we still know very little about its biological basis. Is love for a partner and love for a child the same thing, or two fundamentally different emotions? Can biology explain love at first sight, or falling out of love? And might we ever be able to create a Shakespearean ‘love potion’ that really works?