soulsearching stuff
Today I enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation on religion and Catholicism with a Polish Catholic friend, who, when I mentioned that the human soul’s existence was hypothetical to say the least, brought up the story of a little weight loss just after death, the soul’s flight from the body. I tried not to chortle, but I pointed out – having a go in passing at the appalling Christian belief that only humans have souls – that this would be more convincing if it could be proved that a similar or corresponding weight loss didn’t occur among dumb soulless animals. She was insistent that no such thing happened among our beasty brethren, so….
The 21grams legend is dealt with effectively by Karl Kruszelnicki here. To summarise, the idea grew from experiments done in 1907 by a Dr MacDougall, given much publicity by the NY Times.
They were drawn from six subjects, an absurdly small sample. Of these, two had to be excluded because of ‘technical difficulties’, one had a weight loss of only about ten grams (subsequently regained), and two suffered an initial weight loss followed by a second a few minutes later. Only one of the six showed a sudden, non-reversible weight loss of around twenty-one grams. Hardly scientific proof. Dr Karl points out some of the difficulties of any experiment of this kind:
Even today, with all of our sophisticated technology, it is still sometimes very difficult to determine the precise moment of death. And which death did he mean - cellular death, brain death, physical death, heart death, legal death, etc? How could Dr. Duncan MacDougall be so precise back in 1907? And anyhow, how accurate and precise were his scales back in 1907?
This is probably enough for me, but it won’t convince the true believers. After all, they might argue that different people’s souls have different weights (this would even be more logical than assuming all souls weigh the same), and regardless of the exact point of death, if it could be proved that, in the hour, say, after physical death is confirmed, humans weigh measurably less, and non-human animals don’t, the soulsearchers might be on to something.
Meanwhile I should direct you to this urban legends page for a more detailed account of MacDougall’s experiments and their flawed nature.
My guess though is that with the number of variables you’d have to account for, it’d be impossible to get accurate readings to put this one to bed once and for all. I haven’t found anything on recent experiments to prove or disprove the theory of weighty souls. Nobody seems to take the idea seriously enough to test it.
The 21grams legend is dealt with effectively by Karl Kruszelnicki here. To summarise, the idea grew from experiments done in 1907 by a Dr MacDougall, given much publicity by the NY Times.
They were drawn from six subjects, an absurdly small sample. Of these, two had to be excluded because of ‘technical difficulties’, one had a weight loss of only about ten grams (subsequently regained), and two suffered an initial weight loss followed by a second a few minutes later. Only one of the six showed a sudden, non-reversible weight loss of around twenty-one grams. Hardly scientific proof. Dr Karl points out some of the difficulties of any experiment of this kind:
Even today, with all of our sophisticated technology, it is still sometimes very difficult to determine the precise moment of death. And which death did he mean - cellular death, brain death, physical death, heart death, legal death, etc? How could Dr. Duncan MacDougall be so precise back in 1907? And anyhow, how accurate and precise were his scales back in 1907?
This is probably enough for me, but it won’t convince the true believers. After all, they might argue that different people’s souls have different weights (this would even be more logical than assuming all souls weigh the same), and regardless of the exact point of death, if it could be proved that, in the hour, say, after physical death is confirmed, humans weigh measurably less, and non-human animals don’t, the soulsearchers might be on to something.
Meanwhile I should direct you to this urban legends page for a more detailed account of MacDougall’s experiments and their flawed nature.
My guess though is that with the number of variables you’d have to account for, it’d be impossible to get accurate readings to put this one to bed once and for all. I haven’t found anything on recent experiments to prove or disprove the theory of weighty souls. Nobody seems to take the idea seriously enough to test it.
posted by Stewart at 10:51 am
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