Talking about the soul is almost the same thing as talking about death; Neither of them has an explanation about what really happens, the only thing that can be said are mere assumptions that help us give meaning to life. This fact is certainly not questionable, each person faces existence in different ways and the belief in the soul is one of them, however, trying to quantify it is talking about big words. There is a supposedly scientific legend that the soul weighs 21 grams, which has been replicated decade after decade, but what is true in this?
Where did the idea of the weight of the soul come from?
The belief in the supposed weight of the soul began more than a century ago in Dorchester, a small town in Boston, United States. The town was the place of residence of Duncan MacDougall, a renowned doctor of the town. Just like the epiphany that came to Newton after watching a big hand fall from a tree, Macdougall experienced something similar when a bee landed on his hat. The action immediately made him question whether humans have souls in the first place and if they occupy a certain space in the mind, then they should register a certain weight.
The doctor began a series of research that he published in 1907 in the journal American Medicine and the American Society for Psychical Research. There he wrote:
“Since… the substance considered in our case is organically linked with the body until death occurs, it seems to me more reasonable to think that it must be some form of gravitational matter and, therefore, capable of being detected at the moment of death.” death by weighing a human body in the act of death.”
An unusual experiment
To allay his genuine questioning, MacDougall partnered with Dorchester’s Consumptives’ Home Hospital, which was a charity dedicated to treating patients with late-stage tuberculosis, a disease that was then incurable and fatal. The doctor explains in his article why he chose tuberculosis as a relevant disease for his experiments; he said that patients died in “great exhaustion” and without any movement.
He thought that this would allow him to establish a type of scale capable of supporting a stretcher and determining the patient’s weight before and after death. The first case of him was a man who transcended on April 10, 1901, MacDougall recorded a fall on the scale of 21.2 grams, a fact that would pass down to posterity and become established as the legend of the weight of the soul. However, the data of the second patient was little close to that of the first, he lost 14 grams before stopping breathing.
The more records he obtained, the less a pattern appeared that would give answers to MacDougall. The third patient showed an unexplained loss in two, first losing 14 grams and a minute later, 28.3 grams more. The following cases cannot even be said to have shown reliable data, as the scale failed.
But MacDougall continued with his questioning and repeated the process with 15 dogs, however, he found no weight loss, which indicates in his opinion that they do not have a soul. Although it must also be said that the doctor himself accepted the lack of broader evidence that is required to establish a hypothesis, whether regarding the soul of humans or dogs.
Today the question about whether the soul has weight is still up in the air; no attempts have been made to replicate this type of experiment with humans due to the ethical implications it brings. Therefore, science cannot answer the question due to the great lack of evidence, perhaps the order of spirituality can only remain qualitative and not quantitative.