A few researchers have attempted to confirm the existence of a soul by looking for a change of weight in bodies at the point of death.
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Duncan MacDougall
Duncan MacDougall was born in 1866 and lived in Haverhill, Massachusetts, USA. He graduated from Boston University’s medical school in 1893, where he was class president and class orator. His family were said to have no interest in spiritual or esoteric matters.1Roach (2005), 86. Nonetheless, as a Christian and therefore a believer that humans have souls, he became interested in proving their existence in about 1897. 2Roach (2005), 80. In the introduction to the paper he published ten years later,3All information in this section is drawn from this source except where otherwise noted. he wrote:
It is unthinkable that personality and consciousness continuing personal identity should exist, and have being, and yet not occupy space. It is impossible to represent in thought that which is not space-occupying, as having personality; for that would be equivalent to thinking that nothing had become or was something, that emptiness had personality, that space itself was more than space, all of which are contradictions and absurd.
Reasoning that if a soul occupies space it must also have weight, MacDougall hit on the idea of weighing a person at the moment of death. Assisted by two other doctors, he arranged over several years for six hospital patients at the moment of death to be laid on a cot set on a large platform scale, normally used for weighing bolts of silk and sensitive to 0.2 ounce. He used mostly tuberculosis victims as they tended to lie still, aiding an accurate reading.
In all but the final test, in which the patient died after having just been placed on the cot and while MacDougall was still adjusting the scale, he writes that he noticed a clear loss of weight on or near the time of death. One test (the fourth) he said was marred through ‘interference by people opposed to our work’.
With the first patient, who was observed for almost four hours, the time of death was clear and, according to MacDougall, ‘the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce’.
The second patient’s time of death was more uncertain, as his facial muscles continued to move convulsively after he ceased breathing. However, the beam dropped, showing a half-ounce weight loss when his face stilled. The third patient showed a half-once weight loss on death and a one-ounce loss a few minutes later. The fifth patient showed a three-eighths ounce loss on the moment of death.
MacDougall claimed to have ruled out other explanations, such as discharge of urine or feces (it would remain on the bed, its weight still counting); the weight of air exhaled on the last exhalation (he tried, and had one of his partners try, exhaling while being weighed, and no weight change resulted); and evaporation of body moisture from sweat and respiration (he recorded this in each case, observing that it caused a gradual loss of one ounce per hour, failing to explain the sudden changes at death). He admitted that these experiments needed to be replicated to attain scientific validity.
The results were published in several newspapers including the Haverhill Evening Gazette, the New York Times and the Sunday Post (of Boston).4March 10-11, 1907: see Literature, by title.
MacDougall was thwarted in his own replication attempts by rebuffs from officials and prospective scientific partners.5Roach (2005), 90.
Trying a similar experiment with fifteen dogs, he sedated and killed them with veterinary drugs, and found no weight loss in each case. The results of both experiments combined thus accorded with his Christian belief that humans have souls and animals do not.
MacDougall next went on to attempt to photograph a soul departing from a body by using a beam of light, but the results were too vague to be meaningful. He also theorized that souls must be subject to gravity, else they would be left millions of miles away from Earth after leaving their bodies due to its movement through space.
MacDougall died in 1920.
Criticisms and Controversy
MacDougall faced criticism and ridicule from readers of American Medicine and the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, which had both published his paper. In the New York Times, he squared off against a doctor who insisted any weight loss was caused by perspiration from body warming due to the cessation of circulation.
Writing in Snopes.com, D. Mikkelson concludes that MacDougall’s work was ‘extremely flawed and demonstrated nothing credible about the human soul or post-mortem weight loss.’ He cites inconsistency in the weight losses, imprecision in measurement, likely experimenter error in determining the time of death, and small sample size. 6Mikkelson (2003). Science writer Nancy Roach, while claiming agnosticism on scientific claims regarding life after death, attributes MacDougall’s motives to his being ‘a henpecked little man in need of attention’.7Roach (2005), 87. Critics note that MacDougall’s work has never been replicated experimentally, although researcher Masayoshi Ishida adds that it has yet to be refuted experimentally.8Ishida (2009), 17.
Popular Culture
MacDougall’s claims continue to attract attention in popular culture. The metric version of the first test-patient’s claimed soul weight, 21 grams, is widely mentioned in songs, novels, podcasts, documentaries, TV shows and films and was used as the title of a 2003 American thriller movie nominated for two Academy Awards.
Other Experiments
In 1915 American researcher HL Twining reported attempts to measure the soul weights of mice, finding they weighed nothing.9Twining (1915). See Roach (2005), 90-94. More interesting results were obtained most of a century later by American sheep rancher Lewis E Hollander, Jr, who published his results in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 2001.10Hollander (2001). Weighing one ram, seven ewes, three lambs and one goat at death he found a weight gain of between 18 grams and 780 grams with seven of the adult sheep, though not with the lambs or goat.
In a 2009 paper in the same journal,11Ishida (2009). M Ishida performs an analytical simulation of weighing a person who is undergoing an out-of-body experience (OBE) using Hollander’s technique, concluding that it would be easier to weigh trance-channellers during trance as their experiences are more easily observable.
Gerard Nahum
Nahum (b 1956) is a chemical engineer, physician and pharmaceutical executive who has theorized that the soul can be weighed at the point of death through using highly-sensitive electromagnetic sensors. He has sought funding from many sources, including the Catholic Church, and published his proposals, but has yet to receive the means to test his ideas in the laboratory.12Sadi-Carnot (2015). See also: Roach
(2005), 97-105.
KM Wehrstein
Literature
Correspondence (1907). Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 1/5(May), 263-83.
Haverhill Evening Gazette (1907). Weight of a Soul. March 11.
Hollander, L.E., Jr. (2001). Unexplained Weigh Gain Transients at the Moment of Death. Journal of Scientific Exploration 15/4, 495-500.
Ishida, M. (2009). A New Experimental Approach to Weight Change Experiments at the Moment of Death with a Review of Lewis E. Hollander’s Experiments on Sheep. Journal of Scientific Exploration 23/1, 5-28.
MacDougall, D. (April 1907). The Soul: Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of the Existence of Such Substance. American Medicine 2, 240-43.
Mikkelson, D. (2003). Was the Weight of a Human Soul Determined to Be 21 Grams? [Web page]
New York Times (1907). Soul Has Weight, Physician Thinks, March 11, 5.
Roach, M. (2005). Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. New York, London: Norton.
Sadi-Carnot (Libb Thims) (2015). Gerard Nahum. [Web page]
Sunday Post (Boston, March 11, 1907). Existence of ‘Soul’ Tested by Doctors.
Twining, H. LaV. (1915). The Physical Theory of the Soul. Westgate, CA: Published by the author.