Buckminster Fuller, I heard, once proposed the weighing of a body immediately before and after the instant of death, and then comparing the two results, the better to discover the weight of the soul.
What do you think?
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14 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.I guessing that not so many out there do tongue-in-cheek...
moNOtheist
Level 7
May 24, 2018
0
I think I should have been weighed before and after I read your comment so I can discover the weight of a wasted thought.
indirect76
Level 7
May 24, 2018
2
I suspect that he may well have been a follower of religion, totally devoid of intelligence. !
madmac
Level 7
May 24, 2018
0
Not at all, he was a remarkable thinker, literally outside the box (he devised the geodesic dome - he was blind the first years of his life and so didn't absorb the supposed inevitability that houses and buildings had to be rectangular). As an example, he floored an architect who had just proudly shown him his design for a new building by simply asking "how much does it weigh?" The architect had no clue.
@moNOtheist , This would be akin to believing that a thought would have mass and be subject to gravity,................ if he believed such nonsense.
@madmac It was tongue-in-cheek, asking for people to examine their concept of the existence of the soul.
@moNOtheist Point taken, nice to talk with you.
I have read extensively on Fuller and cannot remember anything of the sort.
SageDave
Level 7
May 23, 2018
2
Perhaps its an apocryphal tale... I've heard it from a couple of sources.
I agree with the other comments. That experiment was debunked long ago.
Betty
Level 8
May 23, 2018
4
I think it was a comment rather than the plan for an actual experiment, by way of asking whether the soul exists.
Information from Snopes.com regarding Duncan McDougal's 21 Grams experiment.....
webbew1
Level 7
May 23, 2018
5
3/4 of an ounce... a soul that heavy would, I'm guessing, outweigh the Feather of Truth in the Great Hall of Judgment.
I haven't heard that Fuller had anything to do with that, it was a physician by the name of Duncan MacDougal who actually performed an experiment of this sort in 1901. It was poorly designed and not repeated by others. [snopes.com]
mordant
Level 8
May 23, 2018
7
It was tried. An early experiment found a difference of 21 grams, but the experimenter was using poor equipment and didn't control well. Since then, no one has measured a weight difference that can't be attributed to something else (air lost from the lungs, for example). Some people will still insist that the first experiment proves the existence of a soul, though.
DonThiebaut
Level 7
May 23, 2018
3
I think that's been found to be nonsense.
Slappy_Longarms
Level 7
May 23, 2018
6
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