I just read an interview with Santiago Lario where he claims that there seems to be a gene responsible of love... (the interview's in Spanish, so you'd better get learning Spanish if you haven't done so before :)
It looks like recently there is an interest among scientists to explore issues traditionally left to poets and thinkers in general. Just yesterday, I read another interview where another scientist, Francisco J. Rubia, claimed that spirituality has its origins in some mechanism of the brain.
I welcome these approaches of science to the more human side of humans. While I do not completely agree with a radical rationalization of the sentimental, I think that science has interesting things to say here. At least, it opens new ways to explore such domains, ways that widen the metaphorical fields of literature as well. So, if it wasn't clear enough, I guess literature cannot ignore science anymore, and vice versa.
Some might say it's another proof of the post modern era that we are supposedly living in. I say it's a celebration of knowledge about the human, far more interesting to me that seeking to explain the movement of planets. As interesting as this is, I like to think of scientists that for a while stop to think about humans rather than rocks.
But let's not forget the words of Spanish poet Becquer, who once wrote "as long as there is a mistery for Men, there will be poetry". Nice verse. Will anybody try to explore the brain mechanisms responsible for the creation of beauty through words? I'm sure there is one, already.