Talk:Heart symbol

Title (2005 discussion)

Religious works aren't literature, at least to the people who believe in the religion. Since the article discusses the Bible extensively, "Heart in literature" is an inherently POV title. "Heart as a metaphor" or "Heart (metaphor)" would be more neutral. It's an easy mistake :). 68.81.231.127 17:12, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

For the record, the lead 'graph began, at the time when the IP complained,

In the Bible, and in much later literature, the heart is used as a metaphor to refer to the moral core of a human being. This is true from the earliest passages; Genesis 6:5 situates....

and the edit summary when {{NPOV}} was added says it applied to

... just the title

But the first history entry at Heart in literature reads

08:00, 28 January 2005 DanD ... (Heart in literature moved to Heart Symbolism and Metaphor)

(The first history entry in Heart (symbol) showing a rename reads

17:15, 9 August 2005 Jfdwolff ... m (Heart (Symbolism and Metaphor) moved to Heart (symbolism and metaphor))

so it seems like it was somewhere around mid-2005 that move-target histories starting listing renames.)
--Jerzy•t 15:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

_ _ I didn't write this article, I just moved it from an inappropriate location.

_ _ I don't view the title of this article as a mistake, simply a choice of words of the original author. My interpretation of the word "literature" is broader than only fiction or works of men. The Bible is also full of references to "man" and "men", yet most religious scholars do not interpet this as narrowly as your interpretation of 'literature' above. -DanD —Preceding unsigned comment added by DanD (talk • contribs) 19:30, 26 January 2005

It's a mistake. If it can be misconstrued, the title needs to be changed. We need to be as careful about implicit bias in titles as we are in categories: "Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category." (Wikipedia:Categorization). It's the same thing here. Anyway, "metaphor" is more accurate.
--68.81.231.127 01:41, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like the images and info provided here, but this article needs some better organization, formatting, wording, and a little expansion, as well as some corrections ("In the Bible, and in much later literature, the heart is used as a metaphor to refer to the moral core of a human being including the intellect and not just the emotions" - so the heart was never used as a metaphor for this prior to the Bible?!, the Bible is technically mythology, not "literature," etc.).
--Silence 08:17, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

A title of Heart in literature reflects an unnatural topic boundary, and the current title reflects a good one. But the complaint that it was PoV is paranoid. Get out your dictionary, if you lack a decent knowledge of Latin roots. Literature is "prose and verse", everything that is rendered into the basics of writing, which is to say "transcribed speech". Mythology as we know it is literature, the Bible is mythology and fraud and history and literature, and if The Word of God existed, that would be literature if it were on stone tablets or papyrus codices or a paperback or billboards (but not if it were only an audio CD or a voice crying in the wilderness). Those who are insulting your superstitions are the ones who call them "mere literature".
--Jerzy•t 15:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Sources?

A recent Slate article [1] makes no mention of several sources for the symbol, such as cattle, Sumerian cuneform for "woman" - and its resemblance to buttock, vulva, etc. Maybe the Slate writer didn't investigate enough, but does anyone know a source for this info?--Chinawhitecotton 20:12, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The cuneiform "woman" sign thing seems to have been inaccurate, so I removed it from the article (see below). For some of the others, see http://geocities.com/womansculpture/gallerythree.htm (etc. -- AnonMoos 22:27, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Icon

Unicode image

I don't see the image of the unicode heart in Firefox. While this may be just my computer, it's quite likely that a large proportion of browsers can't see the image (indeed, as the article itself states), and so maybe it ought to be replaced with an actual image? — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 17:21, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It's not just your computer, it's a very significant percentage of computers. The code absolutely needs to go, just like any other nonstandard text character codes in any Wikipedia articles. DreamGuy 19:39, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I've got the same issue - also running Firefox, on Mac OS X. The odd bit is that while the unicode heart appears as a long vertical line on the page, it appears just fine in the talk page: ♥

I have Firefox, and the hearts show up fine. ɱўɭĩє^{What did I do}_wrong 07:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Works for me too 86.154.82.20 21:36, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Absolute nonsense edit comment and condescending comment

Silence wrote this: "(get a new browser? codes very much like these are used very regularly throughout tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles, to no ill effect. you're just the 1 user out of 10,000 who can't see the pics.)" This is a mixture of utter clueless and arrogance that is quite disturbing. The fact o the matter is it's not at all close to only 1 out of 10,000 users that have a problem, and the main point is that there is no encyclopedic reason to be using such system-specific extended character set codes when they are completely unnecessary. All you nmeed to do is get a REAL GRAPHIC demonstrating the pic. This computer code shorthand is sloppy, noncompliant with cross system standards, and just downright pathetic. There is no reason whatsoever to tell people on other systems that they are somehow second class citizens here and try to paint them as being insignificant and ignorant when in fact it's the people using the botched up code who are ignorant. DreamGuy 12:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

And yet more ridiculous edit comments... Zetawolf ignores very clear problems described in my edit comments, blind reverts everything, and then says to taje it to the talk page, which, tah dah, is already here and already mentioned but ignored by Silence and Zetawolf. It's clear both of them are not editing following Wikipedia policies. They claim that I shouldn;t start a revert war, when they have taken no steps at all to justify their actions or to justify inclusion of nonstandard code on the page itself and are just blindly reverting... I have clearly explained the problems here and in edit comments, so the problem obviously lies with the two editors blindly reverting every change and ignoring every problem. DreamGuy 19:36, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses Unicode extensively in a number of articles, including any article using Greek symbols (Alpha, for example), Japanese characters, or IPA pronunciation. The ♥ symbol is not system-specific - it's part of the HTML standard, and my unmodified Windows 2000 install can view it just fine. I think you're either using an unsupported browser, or you've removed some symbol fonts. Zetawoof^(ζ) 21:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

"Unsupported browsers" are, unfortunately, still in significant use. Not everybody uses Windows XP (and has a computer manufactured since 2002) or uses Windows 2000 (and has a "business" computer manufactured since 2000); many users of the World Wide Web still use computers that came with the Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition operating system, which has much less support for Unicode fonts. Can anybody test this page on Windows 98 or ME and report what happens? Besides, on which page does English Wikipedia define which browsers it supports? --Damian Yerrick (☎) 21:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Given that Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 98 and ME in July, though, does Wikipedia really need to take steps to support them? Zetawoof^(ζ) 21:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

But what does a single PNG of the ♥ symbol hurt? I'm pretty sure that browsers for some handheld systems cannot handle the entire Unicode BMP but can handle small PNG images. Even if a web browser supports a character, if the system cannot provide a glyph for the character, all you get is a □. --Damian Yerrick (☎) 22:03, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

It screws up line spacing if the bitmap isn't the right size - which is system- and user-dependent. Zetawoof^(ζ) 23:11, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Zetawoof:

1. Tell that to the major contributors to the article about the artist formerly known as File:Prince symbol.svg.
2. Images that are one em tall do not screw up line spacing. The fact that MediaWiki does not allow image sizes to be specified in ems is a MediaWiki limitation, which should be reported in Bugzilla.
3. I was referring primarily to the big red ♥ in "As icon", which could be turned into a PNG thumbnail at right without hurting much of the flow of the article.

--Damian Yerrick (☎) 23:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

The line spacing on that article is actually screwed up badly on my machine - I can provide a screenshot, if you want. In any case, that article uses an image because no glyph is available - if there were a widely available Unicode codepoint for File:Princesymbol.png the article would probably use that. An image for the large heart would be perfectly acceptable, though - that one's being used as an image, not a symbol, which could be fixed without wrecking text flow. Zetawoof^(ζ) 00:07, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The bigger issue, though, is that you're repeatedly deleting an entire section of the article ("I ♥") without justification, and reverting unrelated edits in other parts of the article. This isn't OK, and is the primary reason we're reverting you. You'll have to provide some sort of good reason this section doesn't belong before anyone's willing to let your edit stand. Zetawoof^(ζ) 20:40, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

" I Love"

I can understand theres some relevance in this section, but sentences on the symbol for clubs, spades and the i 8 NY for godzilla, i would change some of the more ridiculous ones but i'm not quite sure which are actually relevant. 124.176.21.7 22:42, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

They are relevant, as icon usages that show the influence of the rebus-like use of the heart icon, in the response to it of paralleling it with two other suits, and extending it to a couple of very ironic symbols. The language could say something better abt that.

On the other hand, i'm removing discussion of the n-n 246-GHit Hiney Wine (and the inline lk to the "Hiney Wine: Merchandise" site).
--Jerzy•t 17:02, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Heart-symbol-vulva-shape-hypothesis-illustration.svg

Sumerian cuneiform sign

You can see the early form of the Sumerian cuneiform "woman" sign in the upper left of this image; it doesn't really resemble a heart too much, in my opinion. Later, the sign was rotated 90° counter-clockwise and rendered using abstract wedge shapes, resulting in this: AnonMoos 14:44, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

---

"Icon" section

Created image to illustrate current "icon" section of article, if anybody thinks it fits in... AnonMoos 22:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Typing

yes but i want to know how to type it in a conversation wat do i type to say "i luv u"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.158.70.99 (talk) 21:52, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

In an HTML context, use "♥" ♥. There's also "❤" ❤, but that doesn't seem to work on as wide a range of systems. Typing it in a word processor etc. depends on what program you're using under what operating system, and which fonts you have installed... AnonMoos (talk) 03:09, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Resemblances to organs

The Heart (symbol)#As icon section talks about non-resemblance, but not about schematic resemblance (the two lobes of the heart icon reflect the dual-pump function of mammalian hearts) and visual simplification (the icon captures the lobed-ness, and the pointiness toward the bottom; is it any less like a heart than a stick figure is like a person? Does it need any more search for alternate models than a stick figure does? Serious scholars do try to answer such questions, contrary to our article's insinuation, and even if they are contested, we need to say so). References are also needed idea by ideas, and they could guide us to a more nuanced discussion than the probably out-of-balance approach of equal attention to anything that "some people say".
--Jerzy•t 17:02, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

First two sections

I have deleted the first trwo sections after the intro ("In mythology...", "In early...") because they deal with the heart as metaphor, not the heart symbol per se. If anyone feels the text has value, it should be appended to the "Heart" article. Armandtanzarian 18:23, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I restored those sections. They once were part of the Heart article; they were forked here because the editors of that article wanted it to be narrowly focused on biology. Metaphors fall under the wider category of symbols in any case. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:27, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Maybe instead of merging the two articles, Heart (anthropology) could be named "heart (metaphor)", and discussion of the heart as a metaphor for the emotions etc. could be located there, while discussion of the visual heart symbol could be located here... AnonMoos (talk) 19:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Heart (anthropology) has hardly any info on it. It should be merged into Heart (symbol), since a symbol can be literal or metaphorical, and the term would address both types of heart. Leonini (talk) 16:19, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree too. -- Felipe Aira 11:23, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Strongly Disagree: Heart (symbol) is specifically about the symbol ♥ and topics associated with the symbol, such as its meanings, uses, etc. It is not about other metaphorical meanings of the word "heart" or the concept of "heart". If anything, ♥ is a reference to the metaphor, a reference to Heart (anthropology) rather than the other way around. I admit that Heart (anthropology) is inelegant, but I don't agree with Heart (metaphor) either. - BalthCat (talk) 06:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

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"Icon" section

Why is it that for this part

"The "heart" shape is formed by the back and wings of a dove[citation needed],"

it claims a citation is needed? All you need to do is take 2 doves, have them sit in the water, facing each other, and if their heads touch, then you can clearly see the heart that is formed. You can even see this if you look at the additional images.207.81.250.186 (talk) 04:27, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean swans? AnonMoos (talk) 22:16, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The IP editor is clearly confused.... but beyond that, this section in question is not for random bits of meaningless trivia but for possible explanations for how the symbol originated. Whether it's swans kissing or doves flying it needs a source from some reliable source arguing that that was the origin, or that it's otherwise significant in some way. Otherwise it's just pointless to mention. DreamGuy (talk) 23:46, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

What's up with using <3 as a heart emoticon? Can we get a citation? Every time I see <3 in chat it means "ass hat". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.101.117.210 (talk) 05:41, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Aortic arches

I remember hearing on the radio this one time that the aortic arches seen in short term embryos were what yielded the icon. Can anyone back me up on this? --79.66.69.218 (talk) 20:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

People were vague enough on many of the details of adult anatomy until ca. the mid 17th century, when the use of the microscope started to add new emphasis and rigor to the field, so I doubt that details of tiny embryonic anatomy would have been known until a relatively modern date -- and I'm not sure why they would have taken on great prominence at any time... AnonMoos (talk) 16:49, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

should S2 and/or ❥ be mentioned too?

<3 is mentioned, and so are 3 other unicode chars, should S2 and/or ❥ be also mentioned?--TiagoTiago (talk) 01:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Why "S2"? And the other one displays as an empty rectangular box in my browser... AnonMoos (talk) 16:52, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Never seen the S2 before, but the upper curves of both characters resemble a heart. Just thought I'd point that out.173.32.219.250 (talk) 07:43, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Freya?

I have this idea that the heart symbol has something to do with the goddess Freya; also that it looks like female buttocks. Freya as goddess of ass? I don't mean to be crude here: just clear —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.251.194.18 (talk) 23:10, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Yea, It looks more likely a female buttock when they do doggy style. Male dick is an arrow (-->) symbol. When an arrow hits a heart that means this couple plays doggy style and game-over. I think this is one way of showing love so they use this kind of heart symbol with an arrow hits it as a symbol of doing LOVE with eachother. If it is the heart only, that means the girl is still virgin (virgin love). If an arrow hits the heart, then this love already has an owner (a male). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.112.154.166 (talk) 17:35, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Any reliable sources or is all that just wild ass speculation? DreamGuy (talk) 20:54, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

possible symbolic explanations

This may sound ridiculous, but if the heart symbolizes passion, perhaps the reason for its shappe is the fact that when people kiss, there result of there heads slighty resemebles a heart, especially in people with fine jaw lines. also the lips that are puckered, they also slightly reveal the shape... haha jus a random thought. -M3T4LLi4- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.42.239.62 (talk) 07:46, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

That isn't any more ridiculous than a number of other explanations that have been offered, but it would be nice to have a respectable source citation. AnonMoos (talk) 09:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Too many images

I have removed several images, specifically two depictions of the heart shape without any additional relevance to the article (there are already sufficient images of the shape), and a box about the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic for heart which was not discussed in the article. I felt there were too many images for the existing amount of text, giving the article a cluttered, disorganized look and preventing relevant images from lining up with the corresponding text that they illustrated. Hopefully this was not too drastic an edit to make. Augurar (talk) 06:49, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Unicode 6

There's a bunch of new heart symbols in Unicode 6 (published Oct 2010). These includes a playing card heart, and a bunch of emoji hearts including a broken heart. Chart here: here (pdf) and more info here. —Pengo 09:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Done, thanks to ChristTrekker. —Pengo 22:52, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The Mandelbrot set

The heart symbol somewhat resembles a Mandelbrot Set fractal which is created by graphic a mathematical formula for absolute chaos, or something along those lines. It's worth mentioning in the context of Carl Jung's idea of the collective unconscious. A number of fractal patterns occur naturally on every scale, such as the spiral of Fibonacci. The human body is seemingly formed by this, and the ratio of Phi, and (once more), the Mandelbrot set. It might sound too tangential and/or "out there" explained poorly, which is why I've mentioned it here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.208.173.165 (talk) 01:46, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

No one ever really saw the Mandelbrot set until "spring of 1979" (according to Bodil Branner), and the visual resemblance of the basic set outline to a heart shape is not that great (maybe there are manipulations and and zoomings which give a greater shape similarity). AnonMoos (talk) 07:08, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Well Branner was wrong. I just found a curious page you might want to examine before dismissing this line of thought entirely. There are works by a German monk from the 13th century (Udo of Aachen) depicting the Mandelbrot set in artwork and in writing, no mushrooms required. Notice the position of the set in these old depictions. It's not horizontal, but vertical and downward-pointing. See? Perhaps a heart-shape was a simplification of this, or maybe the shape itself otherwise appeared within our 'collective consciousness' ahead of its time, or maybe the someone saw this image and it got around. It's a much more thoughtful explanation than 'Freyja's Ass' or "We Really Don't Know", which is so far the extent of our discourse here.

Once more, it's worth mentioning.--76.208.173.165 (talk) 09:04, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that's a joke (notice the date "April 1st 1999") and even if (supposing purely for the sake of conversation) it weren't, there would still be no discernible way one uninfluential individual's personal speculations could determine the shape of the cultural heart symbol. And as I said before, the Mandelbrot really doesn't look all that similar... AnonMoos (talk) 18:35, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

In mythology and religion

I see this has been discussed before, but not for some years: The article says it is specifically about the symbol of the heart-shape, but then goes on about mythologies without any reference to symbol or shape. Bothered me. How about renaming this article, and rewriting the intro to specifically include such topics? --BjKa (talk) 13:22, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

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Graph

how do you make (x2 + y2 − 1)3 − x2y3 = 0 equal y for graphing on a calculator? 174.20.149.127 (talk) 00:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Try y = square root of 2/3 - x squared? It has been a while for me though.--Canoe1967 (talk) 22:02, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Getting a standard graphing calculator to graph a Y=X function that doubles back on itself like that is pretty difficult. They tend to gack out on single-variable equations with multiple solutions like that. However, you should be able to switch your calculator over into parametric mode and graph it using the trigonometric functions listed in the next graph to the right of the one you're looking at in the main article. Hope this helps! 24.154.70.132 (talk) 15:26, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Seat of the mind

Sorry I am just an IP but I added a "citation needed" to the first paragraph, where it says that it was believed the heart were the "seat of the mind" - I hold a Master in History and quite frankly can"t think of any culture that did believe that humans have their mind in their heart or that thinking is done there. But I might have been partying the day that was taught at the university and have thereby missed it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.48.193.115 (talk) 03:03, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Most likely it was a joke edit, but I guess all wikipedians were partying or writing wikipedia at the moment. :-) - Altenmann >t 06:41, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I think it was based on the various meanings of the ancient Greek word Φρην (Wiktionary definition here, Liddell and Scott definition here), though I don't know whether the ancient Greeks literally thought the brain was in the chest... AnonMoos (talk) 11:50, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Topic muddled

There does not appear to be a clear topic to this article. It seems to mix discussion of the traditional European shape and the heart as a symbol of emotion. As the article seems to be primarily about the latter I would propose making that explicit and treat the first as one representation of that topic. The article also includes a pretty elaborate section on various miscellaneous mathematical models that resemble the European symbol to one degree or another; yet another tangential topic.

- MC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.88.165.35 (talk) 04:41, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I proposed splitting into "Heart (metaphor)" and "Heart (visual symbol)" but this didn't seem to find favor (see comment of "19:45, 14 March 2008" above). As the article is currently established, neither the metaphor nor the visual symbol is off-topic... AnonMoos (talk) 13:23, 9 June 2012 (UTC)