#36   Physician Weighted the Human Soul Using a Scale

If you were to stack five nickels on a scale, you would have the same weight as the human soul. This is the postulated outcome of the experiments of a man obsessed with the human soul and his ability to prove its existence. Twenty one grams, the outcome of the experiment and the name of a movie starring Sean Penn (among others) seems like a lot when speaking about something you can neither see or touch. The strange study was conducted by Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Massachusetts who devoted the last 13 years of his life either thinking about the weight of the soul, studying the weight of the soul, or defending the findings and techniques used to measure the weight of the soul. Many thought him foolish. Others, mostly in the medical profession, thought him mad, the rest of the world watched in hopeful anticipation.

Dr. MacDougall's finding have to be questioned whether you believe in the existence of an everlasting soul or not. The time of death used in his experiments is the main concern when considering the actual ability to conduct accurate tests. In science, accuracy is of the utmost importance. There are four deaths that will occur at the end of a human life. First, there is a legal death that widely depends on the laws of the country or even the state in which it occurs. This, of course, had no bearing on the outcome of the experiment. There is the death of the cells and their ability to grow, regenerate, or conduct activity. Some consider the moment of death as occurring when the brain dies, or ceases to function. While this is a measurable death, there is no indication whether Dr. MacDougall was monitoring it. All of these functions amount to the time of physical death. The question then remains; what was the determining factor used to calculate the time of death in the tests, legal, cellular, brain activity, or physical. The moment we stop breathing is very different from the moment in which we physically die. With all of this in mind, something happened that no one could explain. Many may make conjecture but since no one has carried on the good doctors work, we will have to wait for science to become interested enough to figure it out.