Weight of a soul?

Factual Questions
21

A couple more responses from knowledgeable folks:

====

Milborne Christopher wrote a book about such attempts to prove the afterlife by measuring the soul, or looking for evidence of clairvoyance.

The biggest objection is that, even if the body did get lighter at death (a claim not at all established, since there are many things that can go wrong while measuring weight change at death), how does that establish a soul, or an afterlife or anything else that goes with it?

As for things that go wrong…

First the apparatus is hardly likely to be able to measure 3/4 oz accurately. If it were, what might cause a 3/4oz loss of weight
for a man dying of consumption. Oh, how about moister loss, coughing, the weight of air in the lungs, perspiration. Lets assume
the attendants just stood outside the room watching the balance beam waiting for the patient to die. Mention was made of maintaining a balance on the scale. Why? Perhaps because it kept changing from coughing, respiration, perspiration, … Not to mention all the vibrations and currents from people milling about the room.

If there were a control patient who didn’t die, and we had the time course of weight for both patients, then we might be able
to start doing a serious analysis. However, since techniques for doing time series analysis are still evolving today, it’s doubtful they were used in 1907.

====

There was, I believe, an article on this in the Skeptical Inquirer many, many years ago.
It’s one of those “classic” things that is often cited by people to “prove” the existence of a soul. Several years ago, I was talking with a man who ran a martial arts supply store around here (now closed) and he cited it as part of his argument that chi existed.

IIRC, the SI said that part of it could be from loss of water vapor or some such things. I just pulled a book on forensics off my shelf and it has a lengthy section on how long it takes different portions of a corpose to dry out and otherwise exhibit signs of decomposition and change/ The difference in weight before and after death, in this case, was noticeable but not great. I don’t know if it has been repeated. Perhaps some sort of forensics test would explain more.

22

Look guys, I appreciate your input. I really do. But I can speculate just a well as you can why the experiment would be invalid (just look at the OP). OK, I didn’t specify the variety of experimental errors that might be involved, but I think most of the things you mention are either mentioned in the OP or in the link. Now, according to the paper:

  1. He claims the scale was sensitive to .2 ounces.

  2. In the first experiment, he observed a normal weight loss of 1 ounce per hour (he says due to evaporation of sweat and respiration), but at the moment of death, there was a 3/4 ounce loss.

  3. The scale weighing the dogs was sensitive to 1/16 of an ounce and showed no such loss.

If he’s lying about the scale or his observations, it’s obviously a hoax, which I already admitted was a possibility. If it’s not a hoax and he observed the same thing six times, it could be wishful thinking combined with experimental error (ala cold fusion). The only way to know now would be a blind experiment; maybe a sensitive digital scale compared to EKG and EEG readouts. Unless you can tell me it’s actually been tried again, or you know of some instantaneous evaporation that occurs at death, I don’t see how we’re going to reach a conclusion one way or the other. Your doctor said it had never been successfully replicated, but that tells me nothing unless it has it been unsuccessfully replicated! Don’t you agree? MacDougall admits more research was necessary, so what happened?

Finally, I did not say it would be proof of the existance of a soul (again read the OP, sections D & E), but merely that it was possible evidence.

I don’t mean to sound hostile here–speculation and personal observations are fine, but let’s not pretend that they’re a substitute for valid science.

23

unless it has been unsuccessfully. . .

Sorry…

24

Well, then you can just believe whatever you like. I’ve done what I could in soliciting information, but you apparently didn’t like what they had to say. Did they have hard scientific data to disprove it? No. Did they have intelligent things to say? Yes. Am I going to spend any more time on this? No. Call me when you get more than a really old paper.

25

David:

I don’t blame you for not finding anything; thanks for the effort. My reaction has nothing to do with liking or not liking your info, or even believing one way or the other. Rather, it is the lack of any other hard evidence that has left me a bit frustrated with the whole thing.

And, yes, if I do ever find anything concrete, I’ll let ya know.

26

I’m not a scientist but I did read through the paper you linked. It struck me that Dr. MacD made no mention of the size or stature of his victi…, er, patients.

Are we to infer then that all “souls” have approximately the same weight? If this is true, why is there any variation in his findings? The weight loss varied from 3/8ths of an oz. to a full ounce. If the soul is one-size-fits-all, it suggests his measurements were not very accurate.

On the other hand, if the weight loss was in proportion to the body size, does that mean some people have bigger souls? Can you increase the size of your soul by spirituality or by simply overeating?

And what about this guy, patient 3?

Was he a multiple personality, or what? Did he have a couple of extra “souls” tucked inside?

Dr. MacD asserts the loss could not be attributed to expelled breath and “proved” it by lying on the bed and vigorously breathing in and out, without effecting a measurable weight change. But he couldn’t possibly expel all the air from his body or he would have been dead, too. Doesn’t sound like good scientific method to me.

As for the dogs, again what size were they? Were they all Chihuahuas or was there a St. Bernard in there?

I don’t think the good Dr. spent much time looking for alternate reasons to explain the so-called mysterious loss of weight. He had the explanation he wanted and didn’t attempt to objectively examine his findings.

27

Well, if his scale was only accurate to 1/5 an ounce, that gives you some variation right there. If he meant +/-.2 ounces, that’s actually .4 ounce possible variation. Doesn’t .75 +/- .2 ounces fall pretty close to his results? Secondly who’s to say all souls are equal, regardless of body weight? Certainly it would be interesting to correlate body weight with his findings, tho.

I disagree; he didn’t need to expel all the air. If your diaphram isn’t capable of creating a negative pressure differential between the outside air, you wouldn’t be able to inhale. At death, the pressure should become equal to the outside air, not zero. Any doctors (or physicists) care to validate this?

Very good point, and that’s probably a good indication that experimental error may have played some role. Unless (dare I suggest) patient 3 was possessed… Hmm. I still think documentation from a modern experiment would clear things up more.

Also, I must note that I said the phenomena was observed six times, when paper said two of the six were not controlled enough to be accurate. Surprised you didn’t catch that one, David…

28

“between your lungs and the outside air”, that is.

I hate when that happens…

29

Crackpots such as MacDougall, Velikovsky, etc. and poor experimental method are no friend of religion. Concluding that anything that doesn’t have a known explination is bad science and bad faith.

My Jesus fish can beat up your Darwin fish but forgives it instead.

30

Well said.

31

Well, except for maybe that second sentence that seems to be missing a word somewhere… Or maybe I’m just misreading it.

32

You’re right, my thoughts were faster than my fingers.

Concluding that anything without a scientific explanation must therefore be divine intervention makes for both bad science and bad faith.

I believe that God created a universe with order and rules and gave us minds that are able to understand it. We put the things we see in terms we know and Moses put things in terms he knew. The book of Genesis is not exactly an engineering speficication.

Thus endeth the rant.

My Jesus fish can beat up your Darwin fish but forgives it instead.