March 23, 2010 • 14 mins
In the early 1900s, Duncan Macdougall set out to prove the existence of the soul. By placing consumption patients on a scale as they died, he tried to find a difference between the weight of a person before and after death. Learn more in this podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff from the science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey, this is Alison I don't know,
like the science editor at how stuff first dot com.
And this is Robert Lamb, science rider how stuff works
dot com. So you're having a little fune with science.
(00:23):
But before we get there, let's let's talk about weight. Okay,
let's let's do it. Okay, you're looking at me with
your eyeballs? Yes, how much do you think in eyeball? Ways?
Left or right? All right? Right? Um? Either actually I
don't know eight grahams, Yeah, ballpark for an adult eyeball? Uh?
(00:45):
What about the weight of your skin? For I don't know.
Let's say it's a hypothetical man or a woman like
all of it a pile of skin on a scale?
How much would you think in my way? Oh? Ten pounds? Yeah,
actually it's nine pounds. I thought that was surprised. We
haven't how much for the weight of the soul. The
weight of the soul, well, a lot of people would
say that the soul you will either doesn't exist or
(01:08):
something that's so intangible can't be but it can't be waited.
But that doesn't stop people from trying. That's what we
love about science, taking scientific principles, taking physics, taking our
understanding of electricity, et cetera, and trying to figure out
what the soul is and where it comes from. So
that's what we're talking about today. Weighing the song. Let's
(01:29):
talk about one of the early soul wears. This guy
by the name of Duncan McDougall. Yes, he's really the
the grandfather of soul weighing, like, this is the guy.
This is where we get the whole twenty one Graham's thing. Correct. Yes, yes,
it is the Hollywood movie if Benicio del Toro, Sean
Penn and Naomi wants Yeah, McDougall wrote that. But but
he did weigh a bunch of eternally ill people. Yeah.
(01:52):
Background the nine early nineteen Dreds. He went to sort
of a hospice place for people with a late stage
to be I think back then they call that consumption.
And what he proposed doing was getting a couple of
dying people, or getting one dying person at a time,
and they're kind of last throws of death and putting
(02:13):
them on this scale caught in all so that all
of their body mass and assorted medical trappings would be
on the scale and then um ascertaining the time of
death by pleasing a stethoscope and listening to the heartbeat.
Like so when the heart stopped beating, that's when the
person died, according to McDougal, Yeah, it's basically and weighing them. Yeah,
(02:34):
it's like the the analogy were using earlier was that
it's kind of like if you set out in the
morning with your wall in your back pocket and you
wait X amount, and then an hour later, if someone
were to steal your wallet, you would weigh slightly less,
and you'd be able to determine how much the wallet
weigh based on the difference. So basically that's what McDougald
(02:55):
is trying to do, but in you know, instead of
say going to a place where wallets are frequently stolen,
he's going to a place where he's pretty much guaranteed
they're going to be some human deaths. And the consumption
patients tended to not put up a struggle. They tended
to be very still during the the final moments and
uh in makee for particularly good UH test subjects. Yeah,
(03:18):
it's not like they were having like these crazy death
spasms or anything like that. I think they're pretty much
comatose near the end. And yet um, he basically only
got the twenty one grams from one particular patient, right,
I mean these it's not like each one just was
like clockwork, oh, twenty one, twenty one grams. Now he
had he had one patient where he was able to
(03:39):
determine like this, uh uh, this this particular weight loss.
Um others who either wasn't able to nail down exactly
when the patient died, or there was some sort of
interference in the proceedings. Yeah, so we're talking about an
experiment that consisted of six subjects with one result that
people have picked up on um. And then you have
(03:59):
comp ocations like as Robert said, like determining the time
of death. And then other people were thinking that maybe
it was this thing called insensible weight loss basically like
you know, where the patients, you know, sweating it out,
or maybe they were losing this very minute uh mass
through breeding or stuff like that. Right, And these scales,
(04:20):
these fearbank scales, were not designed for weighing dead people
at the moment of death. So there are any number
of other complications that it could occur with like how
the person is position on the scales is part of
the cot hanging off the side. Um. And and then
you know even like small amounts of movement on their
part there, you know a number of factors. I think
bank Doogal even got this published in a legitimate period
(04:41):
view journal. Yeah, early early twentieth century you saw a
lot of paranormal research showing up in you know, legitimate
scientific publications. And the whole thing is a lot of
this is new science, you know, and and people were
very excited about it, so they're you know, basically applying
it to everything. You know. It's I have to admit
I was curious about it. Oh, it's fascinating, uh, fascinating stuff.
(05:03):
It's definitely operating on the fringe of science, if you
want to call it that. But it's it's pretty darn interesting.
So McDougald got started with with humans, but then he
he just got that one subject and there's all sorts
of purecratic red red tape. But animals a lot easier. Yeah,
dogs in particular, dog after dog after dog. And what
(05:23):
he didn't find much with dogs actually did he? Yes,
there was no discernible weight loss um, which leads to
one of two possibilities. Either one, um, dogs have no souls,
or two, um, it's so, you know, such a small
soul that you can't even measure it, or I guess three.
All of this is kind of bs So then alone
(05:46):
comes uh. I mean people, people are fascinating with this,
And McDougald wasn't the only guy. So there's a a
high school physics teacher who took up the ball where
McDougal kind of ceased to Yeah, man by the name
of Twining stepped in and continue this research with mice,
because even though there's some pretty small breeds of dog,
(06:07):
it's a lot easier to say, stuff alive mouse in
a test tube and then seal it off and let
it suffocate and then see if there's any change in weight.
You say that, but I can't imagine there's anything easy
about that, And I'm pretty sure anilura's advocates would not
be so happy with the idea of this. But this
is what this guy was doing his spare time. He
was trying to figure out what the the weight of
a mouse's soul was. You gotta respect him for trying.
(06:28):
I mean, it's it's not the easiest question to answer, yeah,
but it is but like we were talking about this earlier,
it's not I mean, it's very hard to argue that
this is important research. You know, it doesn't have a
lot of applications in the right because what what are
you gonna do with thee of your soul? You can't say,
save a wife with it? You you you know you're gonna
you know, I wouldn't have like a minimum soul requirement
(06:50):
for the for the local country club. I mean, it's
kind of pointless alone. Comes to this guy named Donald Carpenter. So, um,
he's a self published author and expert in all sorts
of wields, none of which I think are officially recognized
by degrees. Yes, um, but Carpenter had a really need
spin on it. So instead of weighing when the soul
leaves the body, he wanted to measure when the soul
(07:12):
enters the body. And what would be good candidates for
for such an experiment pregnant ladies or technically like spirit mediums.
So that's a whole another that's a whole another area
paranormal research. So Carpenter thought, well, you know, I'll get
a bunch of newly pregnant ladies and I'll wait for um,
a couple of days. I think it's like forty three
days when the when you can first attect brain waves
(07:32):
and the fetus. And he thought, you know on that day,
that's when, um, you know, the soul will gain weight.
These pregnant ladies will show this this new soul. Wait
if you will. He also decided to get into the
whole dog soul business by predicting that a dog soul
lays weighs less than one eight grahams, meaning that it's
(07:53):
just too light for measurement. Um. Yeah, he said, all
of you guys who have gotten gone about you know,
waging animals, have gone about it wrong. And here's what
you know, you just weren't using the right skills right
and uh he but then he even goes so far
as to say Jesus Is soul would would weigh sixty
four grams. He starts talking about lepre cons um. The
(08:15):
other Mary Roach goes into this in her book Spookum
and more fantastic hilarious detail. But yeah, Carpenter was kind
of a nut, kind of anne. His book is still available,
Physically Weighing the Soul. I would like to read it.
I have to conse check it out and then along
(08:37):
outside of the realm of nunners comes this guy from
Duke University, a guy by the name of Gerald Nahum, yeah,
or Jerry Nahum. This this is a man with an
m D from Stanford undergraduate, came from Yale Um. He
was with Duke University and now he's with the f
D A and U. And this guy took like a
very high tech approach to the whole situation, right, He
(09:00):
wasn't just looking at it and saying, well, I'll put
you on a scale and see what the weight loss
or weight differences. I mean, he's still talking about putting
people on scale, but he's talking about like an ultra
sensitive scale and one that's you know, completely sealed off
and then surrounded by basically every kind of center you
could imagine, especially electromagnetic energy detectors to gauge radiant energy.
(09:21):
So we're talking about like, you know, if the if
the soul were, you know, were to leave the you know,
body and waves, et cetera, they could he could somehow
possibly m detect this energy. And if he was able
to detect something leaving the box or emanating from it,
then there'd be a change in weight, right, and uh,
I mean energy. This would be due to energy loss
on a very minute scale. All right, This all basically
(09:45):
breaks down to the idea that the soul, you know,
and he doesn't even talk Naham doesn't even talk in
terms of the soul. Really basically he's talking about consciousness
and then consciousness as information, all right, and least quantum
le information has a slight weight. It's energy, right, So
like a thought you're having has has energy, and thus
(10:09):
the soul has energy. But how exactly we quantify that
is what it's also going with the idea that energy
can neither be created nor destroyed somewhere. You know, if
the if the cat's not in the house, he must
have gone outside, must be in the art. It's it's
that kind of thing, you know. So so yeah, so
(10:29):
for today him, it seemed pretty obvious that the soul,
consciousness whatever, this energy is going somewhere, and he proposed
an idea on how to observe it and uh and
see what it is. Of course, he didn't exactly get
funding for it because it believed the cost was like
hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah, plus the fact that
(10:49):
I think not too many people were well versed in
stuff like you know, souls or quantum physics or biology.
It's pretty complicated stuff um and uh and and but
but he tried, he tried to get some some funding
behind it. In fact, he went to the Vatican and
this yes, and this is a this is a also
(11:10):
told in Mary Roaches spook Um at the next one
story from her interview with Naan. Uh. He went to
went to the Vatican to see if they were interested
in this kind of thing. Vatican, you know, they were
just like they passed on it because basically there's there's
no percentage in it for for for the Church. You know,
it's like either you back up what back up something
(11:32):
that is an article of faith with everybody that everyone
just believes in, or you like disprove it with science.
So there's no there's no positive spin on it for him.
So that so he goes home and packing, But then
they end up calling him back for a second interview. Uh.
And this time he goes in and they have Vatican
scientists there. They have we're talking guys with backgrounds and
(11:54):
astrophysics and uh um and you know in quantum mechanics
and and all this send up and this time. They're
not just saying they're not interested. They're pleading with him
not to conduct any of this research. Right. They figured
he'd open this window into the world. Although I mean,
if these souls are departing, presumably there is a window
that's opening all the time when people are dying. Yeah,
(12:17):
so they're like, the basic idea, I think the exact
quote was open a window that might not be closed
after opening, which you could sort of take to being like,
you know, the idea of like a notion being introduced
that can't be completely dispelled, but roach really stresses the
idea that it might be more than that, this idea
that it would be like a you know, in a
(12:40):
very science fiction e or horror terms, like a portal
into another world another you know, goes are and all that,
you know, just crazy monster gods, window into hell, all
sorts of stuff like that. You know, the imagination just
runs wild. And so the Vatican was a little maybe
you shouldn't do this, and then they and they all
so tried to get him to convert to Catholicism. I
(13:03):
didn't know that part. So he went home and got
a job with the FDA. So that was kind of
the this are the modern day folks who have been
interested in slowing, but also the acing Egyptians. I mean,
this has been a question that's been eating at us
for centuries. Yeah, the thousands of years. Um, you've you've
been to the museums, you've seen hieroglyphics, right, Um, Well,
(13:23):
there's a there's a one portion in the Egyptian Book
of the Dead that shows the eydis headed thought and
he's weighing like the human heart, human soul, you know,
everything that we are against a feather, and that's how
how he judges whether one is fit to hend of
the afterlife. So, if you want to know more about
(13:44):
anything from ghosts to quantum suicide to reincarnation, skip on
over to how stuff works dot com for moral this
and thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
(14:05):
blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to stuff from the science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey, this is Alison I don't know,
like the science editor at how stuff first dot com.
And this is Robert Lamb, science rider how stuff works
dot com. So you're having a little fune with science.
(00:23):
But before we get there, let's let's talk about weight. Okay,
let's let's do it. Okay, you're looking at me with
your eyeballs? Yes, how much do you think in eyeball? Ways?
Left or right? All right? Right? Um? Either actually I
don't know eight grahams, Yeah, ballpark for an adult eyeball? Uh?
(00:45):
What about the weight of your skin? For I don't know.
Let's say it's a hypothetical man or a woman like
all of it a pile of skin on a scale?
How much would you think in my way? Oh? Ten pounds? Yeah,
actually it's nine pounds. I thought that was surprised. We
haven't how much for the weight of the soul. The
weight of the soul, well, a lot of people would
say that the soul you will either doesn't exist or
(01:08):
something that's so intangible can't be but it can't be waited.
But that doesn't stop people from trying. That's what we
love about science, taking scientific principles, taking physics, taking our
understanding of electricity, et cetera, and trying to figure out
what the soul is and where it comes from. So
that's what we're talking about today. Weighing the song. Let's
(01:29):
talk about one of the early soul wears. This guy
by the name of Duncan McDougall. Yes, he's really the
the grandfather of soul weighing, like, this is the guy.
This is where we get the whole twenty one Graham's thing. Correct. Yes, yes,
it is the Hollywood movie if Benicio del Toro, Sean
Penn and Naomi wants Yeah, McDougall wrote that. But but
he did weigh a bunch of eternally ill people. Yeah.
(01:52):
Background the nine early nineteen Dreds. He went to sort
of a hospice place for people with a late stage
to be I think back then they call that consumption.
And what he proposed doing was getting a couple of
dying people, or getting one dying person at a time,
and they're kind of last throws of death and putting
(02:13):
them on this scale caught in all so that all
of their body mass and assorted medical trappings would be
on the scale and then um ascertaining the time of
death by pleasing a stethoscope and listening to the heartbeat.
Like so when the heart stopped beating, that's when the
person died, according to McDougal, Yeah, it's basically and weighing them. Yeah,
(02:34):
it's like the the analogy were using earlier was that
it's kind of like if you set out in the
morning with your wall in your back pocket and you
wait X amount, and then an hour later, if someone
were to steal your wallet, you would weigh slightly less,
and you'd be able to determine how much the wallet
weigh based on the difference. So basically that's what McDougald
(02:55):
is trying to do, but in you know, instead of
say going to a place where wallets are frequently stolen,
he's going to a place where he's pretty much guaranteed
they're going to be some human deaths. And the consumption
patients tended to not put up a struggle. They tended
to be very still during the the final moments and
uh in makee for particularly good UH test subjects. Yeah,
(03:18):
it's not like they were having like these crazy death
spasms or anything like that. I think they're pretty much
comatose near the end. And yet um, he basically only
got the twenty one grams from one particular patient, right,
I mean these it's not like each one just was
like clockwork, oh, twenty one, twenty one grams. Now he
had he had one patient where he was able to
(03:39):
determine like this, uh uh, this this particular weight loss.
Um others who either wasn't able to nail down exactly
when the patient died, or there was some sort of
interference in the proceedings. Yeah, so we're talking about an
experiment that consisted of six subjects with one result that
people have picked up on um. And then you have
(03:59):
comp ocations like as Robert said, like determining the time
of death. And then other people were thinking that maybe
it was this thing called insensible weight loss basically like
you know, where the patients, you know, sweating it out,
or maybe they were losing this very minute uh mass
through breeding or stuff like that. Right, And these scales,
(04:20):
these fearbank scales, were not designed for weighing dead people
at the moment of death. So there are any number
of other complications that it could occur with like how
the person is position on the scales is part of
the cot hanging off the side. Um. And and then
you know even like small amounts of movement on their
part there, you know a number of factors. I think
bank Doogal even got this published in a legitimate period
(04:41):
view journal. Yeah, early early twentieth century you saw a
lot of paranormal research showing up in you know, legitimate
scientific publications. And the whole thing is a lot of
this is new science, you know, and and people were
very excited about it, so they're you know, basically applying
it to everything. You know. It's I have to admit
I was curious about it. Oh, it's fascinating, uh, fascinating stuff.
(05:03):
It's definitely operating on the fringe of science, if you
want to call it that. But it's it's pretty darn interesting.
So McDougald got started with with humans, but then he
he just got that one subject and there's all sorts
of purecratic red red tape. But animals a lot easier. Yeah,
dogs in particular, dog after dog after dog. And what
(05:23):
he didn't find much with dogs actually did he? Yes,
there was no discernible weight loss um, which leads to
one of two possibilities. Either one, um, dogs have no souls,
or two, um, it's so, you know, such a small
soul that you can't even measure it, or I guess three.
All of this is kind of bs So then alone
(05:46):
comes uh. I mean people, people are fascinating with this,
And McDougald wasn't the only guy. So there's a a
high school physics teacher who took up the ball where
McDougal kind of ceased to Yeah, man by the name
of Twining stepped in and continue this research with mice,
because even though there's some pretty small breeds of dog,
(06:07):
it's a lot easier to say, stuff alive mouse in
a test tube and then seal it off and let
it suffocate and then see if there's any change in weight.
You say that, but I can't imagine there's anything easy
about that, And I'm pretty sure anilura's advocates would not
be so happy with the idea of this. But this
is what this guy was doing his spare time. He
was trying to figure out what the the weight of
a mouse's soul was. You gotta respect him for trying.
(06:28):
I mean, it's it's not the easiest question to answer, yeah,
but it is but like we were talking about this earlier,
it's not I mean, it's very hard to argue that
this is important research. You know, it doesn't have a
lot of applications in the right because what what are
you gonna do with thee of your soul? You can't say,
save a wife with it? You you you know you're gonna
you know, I wouldn't have like a minimum soul requirement
(06:50):
for the for the local country club. I mean, it's
kind of pointless alone. Comes to this guy named Donald Carpenter. So, um,
he's a self published author and expert in all sorts
of wields, none of which I think are officially recognized
by degrees. Yes, um, but Carpenter had a really need
spin on it. So instead of weighing when the soul
leaves the body, he wanted to measure when the soul
(07:12):
enters the body. And what would be good candidates for
for such an experiment pregnant ladies or technically like spirit mediums.
So that's a whole another that's a whole another area
paranormal research. So Carpenter thought, well, you know, I'll get
a bunch of newly pregnant ladies and I'll wait for um,
a couple of days. I think it's like forty three
days when the when you can first attect brain waves
(07:32):
and the fetus. And he thought, you know on that day,
that's when, um, you know, the soul will gain weight.
These pregnant ladies will show this this new soul. Wait
if you will. He also decided to get into the
whole dog soul business by predicting that a dog soul
lays weighs less than one eight grahams, meaning that it's
(07:53):
just too light for measurement. Um. Yeah, he said, all
of you guys who have gotten gone about you know,
waging animals, have gone about it wrong. And here's what
you know, you just weren't using the right skills right
and uh he but then he even goes so far
as to say Jesus Is soul would would weigh sixty
four grams. He starts talking about lepre cons um. The
(08:15):
other Mary Roach goes into this in her book Spookum
and more fantastic hilarious detail. But yeah, Carpenter was kind
of a nut, kind of anne. His book is still available,
Physically Weighing the Soul. I would like to read it.
I have to conse check it out and then along
(08:37):
outside of the realm of nunners comes this guy from
Duke University, a guy by the name of Gerald Nahum, yeah,
or Jerry Nahum. This this is a man with an
m D from Stanford undergraduate, came from Yale Um. He
was with Duke University and now he's with the f
D A and U. And this guy took like a
very high tech approach to the whole situation, right, He
(09:00):
wasn't just looking at it and saying, well, I'll put
you on a scale and see what the weight loss
or weight differences. I mean, he's still talking about putting
people on scale, but he's talking about like an ultra
sensitive scale and one that's you know, completely sealed off
and then surrounded by basically every kind of center you
could imagine, especially electromagnetic energy detectors to gauge radiant energy.
(09:21):
So we're talking about like, you know, if the if
the soul were, you know, were to leave the you know,
body and waves, et cetera, they could he could somehow
possibly m detect this energy. And if he was able
to detect something leaving the box or emanating from it,
then there'd be a change in weight, right, and uh,
I mean energy. This would be due to energy loss
on a very minute scale. All right, This all basically
(09:45):
breaks down to the idea that the soul, you know,
and he doesn't even talk Naham doesn't even talk in
terms of the soul. Really basically he's talking about consciousness
and then consciousness as information, all right, and least quantum
le information has a slight weight. It's energy, right, So
like a thought you're having has has energy, and thus
(10:09):
the soul has energy. But how exactly we quantify that
is what it's also going with the idea that energy
can neither be created nor destroyed somewhere. You know, if
the if the cat's not in the house, he must
have gone outside, must be in the art. It's it's
that kind of thing, you know. So so yeah, so
(10:29):
for today him, it seemed pretty obvious that the soul,
consciousness whatever, this energy is going somewhere, and he proposed
an idea on how to observe it and uh and
see what it is. Of course, he didn't exactly get
funding for it because it believed the cost was like
hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah, plus the fact that
(10:49):
I think not too many people were well versed in
stuff like you know, souls or quantum physics or biology.
It's pretty complicated stuff um and uh and and but
but he tried, he tried to get some some funding
behind it. In fact, he went to the Vatican and
this yes, and this is a this is a also
(11:10):
told in Mary Roaches spook Um at the next one
story from her interview with Naan. Uh. He went to
went to the Vatican to see if they were interested
in this kind of thing. Vatican, you know, they were
just like they passed on it because basically there's there's
no percentage in it for for for the Church. You know,
it's like either you back up what back up something
(11:32):
that is an article of faith with everybody that everyone
just believes in, or you like disprove it with science.
So there's no there's no positive spin on it for him.
So that so he goes home and packing, But then
they end up calling him back for a second interview. Uh.
And this time he goes in and they have Vatican
scientists there. They have we're talking guys with backgrounds and
(11:54):
astrophysics and uh um and you know in quantum mechanics
and and all this send up and this time. They're
not just saying they're not interested. They're pleading with him
not to conduct any of this research. Right. They figured
he'd open this window into the world. Although I mean,
if these souls are departing, presumably there is a window
that's opening all the time when people are dying. Yeah,
(12:17):
so they're like, the basic idea, I think the exact
quote was open a window that might not be closed
after opening, which you could sort of take to being like,
you know, the idea of like a notion being introduced
that can't be completely dispelled, but roach really stresses the
idea that it might be more than that, this idea
that it would be like a you know, in a
(12:40):
very science fiction e or horror terms, like a portal
into another world another you know, goes are and all that,
you know, just crazy monster gods, window into hell, all
sorts of stuff like that. You know, the imagination just
runs wild. And so the Vatican was a little maybe
you shouldn't do this, and then they and they all
so tried to get him to convert to Catholicism. I
(13:03):
didn't know that part. So he went home and got
a job with the FDA. So that was kind of
the this are the modern day folks who have been
interested in slowing, but also the acing Egyptians. I mean,
this has been a question that's been eating at us
for centuries. Yeah, the thousands of years. Um, you've you've
been to the museums, you've seen hieroglyphics, right, Um, Well,
(13:23):
there's a there's a one portion in the Egyptian Book
of the Dead that shows the eydis headed thought and
he's weighing like the human heart, human soul, you know,
everything that we are against a feather, and that's how
how he judges whether one is fit to hend of
the afterlife. So, if you want to know more about
(13:44):
anything from ghosts to quantum suicide to reincarnation, skip on
over to how stuff works dot com for moral this
and thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
(14:05):
blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.