The Weight Of The Human Soul

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Nov 24, 2009
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So I took a family trip down to Crystal River, Florida for the past several days. It was ten hours each way, and my parents did the driving, so I had plenty of chill time.

I read through The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown twice, once on the way down there, and once on the way back up. I must say that I was quite impressed by the novel overall. There were a few too many twists, but the action that was packed in was quite enthralling, as well as the information contained within.

I would love to have Robert Langdon and/or Dan Brown as a professor one day. But that's besides the point. One of the experiments discussed in the novel dealt with the science of noetics, putting physical attributes on formerly spiritual or mystical things.

Noetics is so new and unheard of that Firefox doesn't have it in their spellcheck database, so that must mean something. To the point.

One of the experiments performed in the book (I know, it's fiction) involved weighing the human soul. The way they did this is having a dying man enter a suspended scale of sorts that measured down to the millionth of the kilogram.

The man was weighed, and minutes later he died. The machine was calibrated to the point where nothing could enter or escape it. However, thirty seconds after his death, the weight in the machine decreased by a slight amount. This was assumed to be the soul exiting the human body, and therefore the human soul was weighed.

Bullshit?

Here's a quote from a study done over one hundred years ago along the same lines with less technology, stating the weight of the soul was 21 grams:

In 1907, Dr. Duncan MacDougall found a bunch of people who were about to die and weighed them as they expired. MacDougall claimed that at the point of death, the bodies became lighter. That lost weight, the doctor assumed, was the escaping soul. He even postulated that the souls of the sluggish in life are slow in death:


The subject was that of a man of larger physical build, with a pronounced sluggish temperament. When life ceased, as the body lay in bed upon the scales, for a full minute there appeared to be no change in weight. The physicians waiting in the room looked into each other’s faces silently, shaking their heads in the conviction that out test had failed.


Then suddenly the same thing happened that had occurred in the other cases. There was a sudden diminution in weight, which was soon found to be the same as that of the preceding experiments.


I believe that in this case, that of a phlegmatic man slow of thought and action, that the soul remained suspended in the body after death, during the minute that elapsed before it came to the consciousness of its freedom. There is no other way of accounting for it, and it is what might be expected to happen in a man of the subject’s temperament.


The weight lost of MacDougall’s first subject at death was 3/4 of an ounce…or about 21 grams.
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So what do you think? Does the human soul have a weight? Does it even exist? I believe that as more people read this novel, the interest in things such as this, as well as the study of Noetics, will slowly rise.

Please discuss. I want to hear your opinions.

Ah, yes, and I hope that everyone had a good and safe New Year.
 


There's been a lot of speculation on this, even a movie "21 Grams" starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. The bottom line is MacDougall's experiments, if I remember correctly, were flawed from the beginning and many mistakes were made afterward.

He did the same experiment with dead dogs and found no weight difference, claiming that dogs had no souls (??) From the sublime to the ridiculous.

The whole concept is just absurd. Most people, at the time of death, excrete bodily fluids and crap their pants. The body relaxes, you release fluids. Did MacDougal account for this? Were all his subjects ones tested that didnt release body fluids at the time of death?

There's also a theory which states that objects in motion weigh less than objects at a standstill. Blood circulation, a beating heart, etc could account for "a body in motion" but to even begin a debate on this is really like a debate about that silly blue spiral in the sky we all were ghawing over last month. You want to believe it's supernatural but common sense kicks in and discards the idea - albeit reluctantly.
 
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First of all.....no, let's skip the petty stuff.

If - and the experiments are SO flawed that's a BIG if - this were true - doesn't it completely DISPROVE the belief that the afterlife/whatever is non-physical? Wouldn't that sort of destroy the whole setup?

The divine/eternal/etc thing only works if it's not tied to the physical world. Take my dad's soul for instance. If it has to start out in his body and then move on to HappyFunJesusLand when he dies it's never going to happen - because there is not a CHANCE he will stop to ask for directions.
 
The problem is that with a machine of that level of accuracy, it is next to impossible to build an enclosure that completely contains a human body.

So while theologians might try to explain the weight difference as the soul(things we believe to exist) leaving the body, most physicists would try to explain it as electrons or other elementary particles (things we know to exist) leaving the body as the brain dies and passing through the containment barrier.
 
kblessinggr said:
What if we did the Schrödinger experiment on a live human being?
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Yeah, fuck the cat, let's get real.

Anyway, you'd still be alive if all goes well....and dead, of course.

schrodingers-lolcat1.jpg


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Also, the "weight of the soul" makes for good fiction... but how could a soul have any weight at all? Kinda seems contradictory, in the least.
 
I heard it was 22 grams.

@UnripeArbiter
Does an electron have weight?
Does light weight anything?
If you condense enough light, could you get 22 grams?

Just thinking out loud.
 
SpamHat said:
I heard it was 22 grams.

@UnripeArbiter
Does an electron have weight?
Does light weight anything?
If you condense enough light, could you get 22 grams?

Just thinking out loud.
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Is the soul made of electrons and light?

I thought the soul, would be considered, to be "weightless" and transcendent, beyond any measure of weight; beyond any measure whatsoever.

Anyway, I don't believe in any of it. ;)

Zsaleem said:
Weight of electron : 9.109 382 15(45) × 10-31 kilograms (Kg)
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Thanks, now show that the soul is made of electrons... Then, that will be relevant.
 
SpamHat said:
I heard it was 22 grams.

@UnripeArbiter
Does an electron have weight?
Does light weight anything?
If you condense enough light, could you get 22 grams?

Just thinking out loud.
Click to expand...


Weight of electron : 9.109 382 15(45) × 10-31 kilograms (Kg)

May be the human soul weighs may be it does not. There's no proof yet that its because of the soul the weight decreases. But Physics law indicates- Matter cannot be created, neither destroyed. That makes some sense, at least to me. But still it may be because of some liquids or gases or muscular collapse or other things.
 
Zsaleem said:
But Physics law indicates- Matter cannot be created, neither destroyed.
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Sure it can - there just has to be an equal adjustment in energy. Matter is created and destroyed all the time. Fire = matter being destroyed and turned into energy. Fusion = matter being destroyed and created all at the same time.
 
jryan21 said:
The problem is that with a machine of that level of accuracy, it is next to impossible to build an enclosure that completely contains a human body.

So while theologians might try to explain the weight difference as the soul(things we believe to exist) leaving the body, most physicists would try to explain it as electrons or other elementary particles (things we know to exist) leaving the body as the brain dies and passing through the containment barrier.
Click to expand...

though I know where you're going with this, but do you realize what it would take to get that kind of weight difference from just straight electrons?
 
It's bullshit and I don't believe it.

On a related note: I remember reading reports that the Nazis did the same experiments on animals (no, not Jews, although you would think they would) and the results were initially inconclusive, but then Himmler had them "tweaked" to suit his own views.
 
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