On account of Valentine's Day being right around the corner, and inspired by Sheril's almost-through-the-edits book on the science of kissing, I thought I'd ask the Free-Ride offspring (now 8.5 and 10.5 years old) whether they had any questions about kissing that they thought science might be able to answer.
Their initial reaction:
Both offspring in unison: EEEEEEWWWWWW!!!!
Dr. Free-Ride: Wow, I'm pretty sure that's not the reaction Sheril is anticipating for her book.
Younger offspring: Wait, does French kissing count as kissing?
Elder offspring: Yes.
Younger offspring: I wonder if tongue disease was spreaded by kissing.
Dr. Free-Ride: What's tongue disease?
Younger offspring: It's a disease that's made by your tongue.
Elder offspring: Maybe [younger offspring] means kissing disease.
Dr. Free-Ride: OK, but what's kissing disease?
Elder offspring: Is it a disease spread by French kissing?
Dr. Free-Ride: While I'm not denying that tongue to tongue contact might be an effective way to spread germs --
Both offspring in unison: EEEEEEWWWWWW!!!!
Dr. Free-Ride: -- there are plenty of ways to spread germs even by kissing with no tongue. Heck, you know you can spread germs even without kissing. If you have germy hands, a handshake might be enough.
Younger offspring: But are there some germs kissing spreads better?
Dr. Free-Ride: That strikes me as a good scientific question. So how would you study the question of whether kissing actually transmits diseases?
Elder offspring: You'd need to have tests with people who have the disease and people who don't have the disease.
Dr. Free-Ride: Say more. What kind of tests?
Elder offspring: Some people who have the disease would kiss someone else and other people who have the disease to talk to someone else. Then you see whether kissing transmits the disease better than touching or just being close to someone else.
Dr. Free-Ride: Interesting. Any other questions about kissing?
Younger offspring: Why do animals kiss? And why do humans kiss?
Elder offspring: What causes humans and animals to kiss?
Dr. Free-Ride: So what kind of science do you think might be useful in answering those questions?
Younger offspring: Emotion science.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you mean psychology or do you mean something more about brain chemistry?
Elder offspring: Both. What the brain is doing and how you're behaving.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you think there's a social component to why we kiss, too? That's it's not just brain chemicals or instinct or whatever?
Elder offspring: Yeah.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you think animals are doing the same thing humans do when they kiss?
Elder offspring: Yes.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you think it means the same thing to animals when they kiss as it does to humans?
Elder offspring: Yes, I think so.
Dr. Free-Ride: How could scientists work that out?
Elder offspring: Well, they'd have to look at how their brains work and what they're thinking when they kiss.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hmmm. This presents kind of a problem, doesn't it?
Elder offspring: What?
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, when scientists are doing research with human subjects, how to they figure out what those subjects are thinking?
Elder offspring: The scientists ask, and the human subjects can tell them what they're thinking.
Dr. Free-Ride: Right, but given that, with very few exceptions, animals are non-linguistic, that approach isn't going to work.
Elder offspring: Maybe the scientists can videotape them.
Dr. Free-Ride: Sure, but videotape can suggests that animals are doing things that aren't quite what they were actually doing. Like cats playing keyboards.
Elder offspring: Hmmm.
Dr. Free-Ride: Any other questions about kissing, or thoughts about ways science could answer them?
Elder offspring: Not right now?
Dr. Free-Ride: You're really going to leave me hanging?
Elder offspring: Yes, I always appreciate a cliff hanger.
Dr. Free-Ride: Is it just that you're less curious about kissing than other things?
Elder offspring: Yes, sort of.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you reckon that'll ever change?
Elder offspring: Maybe.
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Waidaminnit.
Animals (apart from human) kiss?
Just wait a few years when they discover sexual attraction be it opposite or same sex. Then the attitude on kissing will do a 180 degree turn.
I'm so proud: The Elder already has a grasp of Koch's Postulates!
Tell me you are not teaching them that 'psychology' studies something distinct from'brain chemistry' !
Who, me?
/Quickly stuffs the Descartes under a couch cushion.
There's the kissing gourami. Perhaps interestingly, it's only the males that kiss each other, and they do it as a competition for dominance, kind of like locking horns.
While your fifth blogiversary post didn't really stick in my head, noting that the sprogs are now 10.5 and 8.5 really struck me. I have been reading your blog for a long time now. At some point, I'm going to run into your family in the street (I teach at a middle school near-ish to SJSU) and you're all going to awkwardly hurry away because I'm going to start talking to you guys like I've been your friend for five years.
"Hey! Remember those silk worms? Those were awesome!"
This is great! You have pretty spectacular kids there...
I've been hearing a lot lately about the science of kissing--that we're testing/tasting each-other's chemistry and such. I've always been skeptical because, as I understand it, there are a lot of cultures that don't kiss, or that kiss differently. It seems like there's a whole lot of very careful subconscious testing that would have to go on, and for a subtle thing like that to develop I'd want some real evolutionary hand-holds, and I would imagine that would involve relatively conserved behavior. Am I wrong?
Oh, and of course psychology and brain chemistry are different. For a lot of reasons, but the most basic is the same reason that quantum mechanics and cell biology are different.
Dave's right. Brain structure's at least as important as brain chemistry.