Elective affinities: Japanese bonds of affection
One of my favorite expressions of ineffability in Chinese is yǒuyuán 有緣, which is what two people feel when they are drawn together by some inexplicable, indisputable attraction. Considerations of beauty and practicality are not what matter. They simply are fated / predestined to be together. They have an undeniable affinity for each other.
I first gained a serious appreciation for the idea of affinity in college when I read Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), the third novel of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The concept was taken up in chemistry (Robert Boyle [1627-1691] — check out his hair!), then sociology (Max Weber [1864-1920]), then in psychology to describe the magnetism between individuals, and in dozens of other fields (commerce, finance, and law; religion and belief; science and technology; business; music; literature; history; mathematics; language studies; etc.). Needless to say, "affinity" is a powerful, productive concept, just as it is an actual force in relations between entities in the microcosm and macrocosm.
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