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“Love Heart” using logic trains and lamps.
The heart, both in symbol and as an organ, has been inextricably linked to our emotions, the mind, the soul, and our being since antiquity in the western world. Both the ancient Egyptians and Greeks considered the heart, not the brain, to be the source of our thought, feeling, and will.
I think there were several factors that contributed to the initial belief that the heart was the primary organ in humans, the major ones being its anatomical position at the center of the body and its necessity in sustaining our life. In some sense, it seems intuitive that that core which allows us to live might be what also allows us to experience life. At the very least, the intimate connection between heart and life is evident.
As the sciences of anatomy and physiology matured, the importance and function of our other organs such as the liver and the brain came to light. The Roman physician Galen seems to have been responsible for postulating the heart as the seat of emotion as a part of his theory of the human circulatory system. It seems that even after Galen's theory was dismissed, the heart continued to represent the source of human emotion.
The notion of heart as seat of emotion seems to have sprung from qualitative observations that changes in emotion appear to have a direct relationship to physical changes in the body, presumably none so apparent than the rhythm of the heart. When a powerful emotion such as fear or anger grips us, the changes in blood pressure and heart beat are the most obvious. I think all of us can attest that love can produce some of the most violent of these changes. You can literally feel it in your chest.
So love's association with the heart seems to stem from the unmistakable physical feeling that emanates from it when we experience love coupled with this psychological notion of the heart as symbol for life and emotion that pervades our collective consciousness.
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