A while ago I posted on the what is effectively the mathematics of sex. Well, so as not to get to Hippolytian about it all and keep a balance I thought I’d comment that over at Edge.org they’re now following up on the mathematics of love wih an interview with John Gottman. It’s an interesting talk (there’s a video interview too). As he says,

I look at relationships. What’s different about what I do, compared with most psychologists, is that for me the relationship is the unit, rather than the person. What I focus on is a very ephemeral thing, which is what happens between people when they interact. It’s not either person, it’s something that happens when they’re together. It is like a structure that they’re building by the way they interact. And I think of it that way, almost like a fleeting architectural fluid form that people are creating as they talk to each other, as they smile, as they move.

I suppose I feel it’s great to use this sort of thing to diagnose what went wrong, but less clever to use it as a guide to who to go with. Put one way, the end may justify the means, but the means qualifies the end, and measuring and the maths affects the means.