Time Essay: The Scientific Pursuit of Happiness

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If that is so, people who anesthetize themselves with booze or pot may be trying to achieve unnaturally what endorphins do naturally. Still, since individual body chemistries vary, the endorphin theory might account for the fact that some people are habitually happier than others: some might just have a bigger supply of this natural analgesic. It may even suggest, moreover, one concrete way in which human beings might assure their sense of happiness; yet this way—the ingestion of synthetic endorphins—is unnervingly like the drug-popping route to happiness envisioned in Brave New World. In all this, alas, nothing much is added to the question that has always nagged the brave old world: Just what is happiness?

Given time, the happyologists could conceivably come up with a useful, or at least a discerning, answer. Perhaps the question is so fundamental that, like love and wisdom, it will al ways elude human definition. For the moment, surely, it can be answered decisively, for better or worse, only by each in dividual. In short, the considerable resources, even good intentions, of science have so far disclosed little about happiness that was not available in the words of Seneca "Unblest is he who thinks himself unblest") in ancient times or those of Abe Lincoln ("Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be") in a more recent epoch. Happiness, in short, awaits its Newton, its Galileo.

Frank Trippett