When all decisions/emotions/attractions/thoughts etc. originate form the brain, why do people use “heart” in such contexts?
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I think people came to this inference because when you get really emotional your heart rate changes, and whereas you can’t tell that anything is going on inside the head, when the heart starts beating, you can feel it and even feel it in others if you touch them. For that reason, ancient humans made an inference that the heart had something to do with emotions.
However, this is not true of all societies. I heard (but have not verified) that in Persian culture, the liver was thought to be the seat of emotion. I don’t know how they came to that inference. Maybe someone disected a corpse at one point and saw that the liver was the largest internal organ whose function wasn’t entirely clear (whereas the intestines are clearly for turning food into poop, and the lungs are for taking in air), and since our emotions are pretty important they attributed our emotions to the liver.
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