靈魂捕捉者

靈魂捕捉者
Soul Catcher
The strange deathbed experiment of Dr MacDougall
By Paul Chambers May 2010

Illustration by David Newton / Etienne Gilfillan
插圖來自大衛牛頓 /埃蒂恩吉爾菲蘭

FT262

That the human body should be home to a physical soul which survived death was at one time rarely quest­ioned. Then came the advent of scientific disciplines such as anatomy, chemistry and physics, whose probing and measuring raised awkward questions about where in the body a soul could live and what physical form it could take. With no medical proof being forthcoming, in 1854 the German anatomist Rudolph Wagner suggested that there must be a “special soul substance” in the body, evidence of which should be sought out by experimentation. Wagner was much ridiculed for his beliefs, and some years later his rival Ernst Haeckel mocked that at the moment of death it might be possible to liquefy the soul by freezing it and then “exhibit it in a bottle as immortal fluid”.
對於人體應是一實質靈魂的家並勝過死亡，是一時間罕見被質疑。然後是科學學科的降臨，例如解剖學、化學和物理，它們的調查和測量提出尷尬的問題，關於靈魂在身體內哪裡可住和它會是什麼實體形式。由於沒有醫學證明即將到來，在1854年德國解剖學家魯道夫瓦格納提出，必定有一種“特殊的靈魂物質”在體內，它的證據應該通過實驗找到；瓦格納明顯在嘲笑他的信仰和一些年後，他的對手恩斯特海克爾仿效，在死亡的時刻有它可能是可能去液化靈魂透過凍結它，和然後“展覽它在一個瓶子內作為不朽液”。
The nature of a human soul was a much-discussed topic within Victorian psychical research communities, many of whose members were also eminent scientists. Different philosophical conclusions were reached, but none was based on empirical evidence, it being deemed too difficult to measure any of the soul’s presumed physical propert­ies. However, not everyone was prepared to accept this, and in the winter of 1896 Dr Duncan MacDougall, a Massachusetts-based surgeon, came up with a novel idea. “Why not,” he asked, “weigh on accurate scales a man at the very moment of death?”
人類靈魂的本質在維多利亞時代的心理研究社區是討論很多的題目，許多他們的成員亦昰傑出的科學家。達成不同的哲學結論，但沒有一種是建基於經驗的證據，它被視為是很難量度任何靈魂的推定物理性質。然而，並不是每個人都準備接受這一點，和在1896年冬季一位以麻省為基地的外科醫生鄧肯麥克杜格爾博士，想出一個新頴的想法， “為什麼不，”他問：“以準確的尺度秤量一個在死亡那一刻的人？”
MacDougall was a member of the American Society of Psychical Research and had a fascination with the idea that the human personality could survive death. Like others in his profession, he knew of no physical locat­ion within the body where the soul could be found but believed that it was “unthinkable that personality and continual personal identity should exist… and not occupy space”. He termed the hypothetical space occupied by the human personality the “soul substance” and argued that, because it did not leave the body until the moment of physical death, it must be held in place by an organic link. This, suggested MacDougall, meant that the soul substance probably had some form of mass and was “therefore cap­able of being detected at death by weighing a human being in the act of death”.
麥克杜格爾是美國靈學研究學會的一個成員，和有一個有魅力的想法，人的個性能夠勝過死亡。像其他人在他的職業中，他不知道在身體內那實質的位置可以找到靈魂，但相信它是“不可想像的，個性和不斷的個人身份應該存在...和佔用空間”。他稱那假設由人的個性佔領的空間為“靈魂物質”，並爭論因為直到肉體死亡它沒有離開身體，它必定被一條有機聯繫困在某個地方。麥克杜格爾提出，這意味著靈魂物質可能有某種形式的質量，和“因此能夠在死亡時被探測，透過在死亡的行為時秤量一個人”。

在天秤上的靈魂
SOULS IN THE SCALES
By 1901, MacDougall had adapted a set of industrial beam scales (accurate to within five grams) so that one side held a platform onto which was placed a lightweight hospital bed while the other contained individual weights which could be added or subtracted to measure any change in mass. Once installed in his hospital, the surgeon then approached several terminally ill patients to ask if they would allow themselves to be weighed during the final hours of their life. On 10 April 1901, his chance came, and at 5.30pm a man “of the usual American temper­ament” and suffering from tuber­culosis was placed onto the apparatus. He was attended by at least four people, including MacDougall and Dr John Sproull, a sym­pathetic colleague. Like many suffering from this disease, the exhausted patient was calm and as he ebbed away, any change to his weight was noted.

Over the course of three hours, there was a small but steady loss of weight, which was put down to loss of water through sweating and respiration. Then, around 9pm, the man’s condition worsened and a few minutes later he died. MacDougall explained what happened next.

“The instant life ceased, the opposite scale pan fell with a suddenness that was astonishing – as if something had been lifted from the body.” MacDougall and his colleagues ascertained the weight loss to be 21 grams.

The immediate and measurable loss of weight at the moment of death excited MacDougall but, as it was the first experiment of its kind to be undertaken, he wanted to explore all potential explanations. The patient was found not to have evacuated his bowels, but he had emptied his bladder – although the urine had soaked into the sheets beneath and had not left the bed. This was not deemed to be sufficient to cause a sudden weight loss and subsequent experiments involving forcibly inhaling and exhaling air could not cause the scales to move in a similar fashion. To MacDougall, the missing 21g at the point of death was inexplicable using any conventional medical knowledge but, as he acknowledged, this was just one patient.

In November, MacDougall was presented with his second patient, also a male suffer­ing from tuberculosis and similarly moribund during his final hours. The measure­ments were made over a period of four and a quarter hours, after which time the man stopped breathing, although his face continued to twitch for some 15 minutes afterwards.

“Coinciding with the last movement of the facial muscle,” wrote MacDougall, “the beam dropped. The weight loss was found to be half an ounce”. As before, MacDougall tried to account for the weight-loss in conventional terms but concluded that it was inexplicable.

Between January and May 1902, a further four patients consented to die on the beam scales. In two cases, sudden losses of 10 and 14 grams were recorded at death, while one experiment apparently had to be abandoned because “There was a good deal of interference by people opposed to our work.” The other patient recorded no weight-loss, something which MacDougall blamed on his having been on the scales only a short time before death.

MacDougall believed that his results could not be explained by natural means and that the loss of weight was being caused by the “soul substance” exiting the body at the time of death.

21克
21 GRAMS
Communications with Dr Richard Hodgson, President of the American Society for Psych­ical Research, convinced MacDoug­all that he was on track, but he worried that “Other experimenters will discover it to be a mare’s nest.” Subsequently, MacDougall repeated the same experiment using 15 dogs, which were anæsthetised and then killed on a beam scale. (The source of these unfortunate animals is not known, but they were apparently “all healthy”.) Unlike his human subjects, no weight loss was observed. From this MacDougall concluded that weight loss at death was a purely human phenomenon – something that only made sense if humans had a soul substance that other animals lacked.

Since devising the experiment, MacDougall had experienced the continual wrath of his superiors at the hospital (he refers to “foolish misunderstandings” as well as the “interference” mentioned above) and was eventually banned from undertaking any further work. He chose to sit on his results for several years, for reasons unknown, before releasing news of his findings to The New York Times, which ran a lengthy piece on 11 March 1907.

The reaction was predictable, with corre­spondents divided between sceptics offering rationalist explanations and supporters adding their own theories and anecdotal evidence. Such was the clamour for further detail that MacDougall wrote up his results into a paper simultaneously published in the prodigious scientific journal American Medicine and the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. In it he presented his evidence and added a further discussion putting forward the idea that the soul substance was lighter than air. MacDoug­all wrote in guarded terms, inviting others to repeat his experiment, but his conclusion came down in favour of a soul substance being the cause of the observed weight loss.

The correspondence continued, especially in American Medicine, many of whose readers were disgruntled at the journal for agreeing to publish the results in the first place. The results were never confirmed or explained, but the idea that a doctor had weighed a human soul slipped into collect­ive memory as offering scientific proof of human immortality.

MacDougall’s work later inspired Laura Gilpin’s poem The Weight of a Soul and the 2003 film 21 grams (this being the weight loss experienced by the first patient). MacDougall’s later years saw him move away from psychical research and into poetry: to judge by his published verse, he was probably better suited to the former than the latter. He died in October 1920, aged just 54 years.

技術困難
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES
Given the philosophical implications of Dr MacDougall’s experiments, it isn’t too surprising that they caused such a stir and that even today they should still be widely talked about. However, his work has never been repeated and its immediate dismissal by the medical community means that little formal attention has been paid to these startling results.

Deducing exactly what went on in MacDougall’s laboratory after more than a century has passed is no easy task, but a possible insight comes from some written correspondence between MacDougall and Richard Hodgson. These letters (which were later published by the American Society of Psychical Research) start in November 1901, after MacDougall’s first experiment, and continue until May 1902, when the entire project was halted. They contain a full description of MacDougall’s methods, results and the circumstances of all six patients which, when compared with his American Medicine paper, offer some clues to the solution of this mystery.

MacDougall’s letters make it plain that, with the exception of the first patient, all the experiments were beset with problems that may be broadly divided into one of two categories. The first problem was in ascert­aining the exact time of death, an issue that appears to affect patients two, three and six. MacDougall acknowledged this with the second patient, where the period of uncertainty lasted for 15 minutes, but with patient three it is only in his letters that we learn of “a jarring of the scales” made while trying to determine “whether or not the heart had ceased to beat”. Patient six was excluded for other reasons (see below), but in his letters MacDougall remarks that “I am inclined to believe that he passed away while I was adjusting the beam”, which again suggests uncertainty as to the exact moment of death.

The second issue was a problem relating to the measuring equipment itself, which MacDougall himself cited as a reason for voiding the results of patients four and six. However, with the fifth patient the measured drop in weight at death was later followed by an evident malfunction, as the scales could not afterwards be made to re-balance themselves correctly. In any object­ive experiment this uncertainty would have voided the result, but at no point does MacDougall question the reliability of his set-up. Thus, of the six patients, just one (the first) appears to have been measured without mishap, but repeated troubles with the equipment and with determining the moment of death perhaps casts doubt on even these results. Thus, rather than trying to find a physical cause for the loss of weight at death, it is conceivable that there was no loss of weight at all, or that it might not have coincided with the moment of death. Only a complete retrial with human patients will answer these questions, and that has so far not been forthcoming.

MacDougall’s correspondence reveals a man with an unswerving belief in the existence of a human soul. At every turn he sought to justify his results in these terms, dismissing or ignoring any evidence to the contrary. It is, for example, possible that he ignored the results of the sixth patient because, in his own words, “there was no loss of weight” measured at the time of death. MacDougall explained in a letter that the negative result was probably due to the patient having been on the scales for only a few minutes, which caused him to doubt “whether I had the beam accurately balanced before death”. This seems like an afterthought used to explain an inconvenient result and one wonders what his react­ion would have been should the result have been favourable.

To me, it seems that MacDougall’s human experiments were hopelessly beset with technical difficulties that serve to make the results unreliable and meaningless. It is probable that his experiments with dogs were carried out under more controlled conditions as it was possible to induce (and therefore better gauge) the time of death. Also, these experiments were carried out using a different set of scales, sensitive to 1.75 grams (as opposed to 5g with the other equipment), and yet no loss of weight was observed. This was also true for a similar experiment performed in 1915 by H Twining using 30 mice that were killed in a variety of situations while being continually weighed. No weight gain or loss could be detected, and the same was possibly true for a similar mouse experiment mentioned in The New York Times (13 March 1907), although I can find no further details of this. One experiment stands in partial contrast and that is by Lewis Hollander, who observed a vari­ation in weight of between 18 and 780g in the few seconds following the induced death of seven sheep. This weight change was, however, not permanent and could not be measured in either lambs or a goat.

Perhaps the final word should go to psych­ical researcher Donald Carpenter, who suggests that a new unit be created in order to define the energy require to sustain a human soul. He proposes that the unit be called “The Mac” in honour of the pioneering work of Duncan MacDougall.

拍攝靈魂
PHOTOGRAPHING THE SOUL
The work of Duncan MacDoug­all may not have set the medical world alight, but it certainly inspired others to conduct their own search for evidence of the human soul. One such episode began in 1910 when Walter Kilner, a medical technic­ian at London’s St Thomas’s Hospital, announced that he had created a special set of glass filters that, with suitable training, would allow people to observe the human aura or Etheric Double, as he termed it.

Kilner’s experiments were published in a book which, in 1911, influenced Patrick O’Donnell, a Chicago “X-ray expert”, to create some Kilner-style glass filters through which he could observe the human aura. With MacDoug­all’s weight experiments in mind, O’Donnell was given permission by the Mercy Hospital to use his filters to observe a dying man.

“The attending phys­ician announced that the man was dead,” said O’Donnell. “The aura began to spread from the body, and presently disappeared. Further observation of the corpse revealed no sign of the aura.”

O’Donnell sought not to explain his observ­ation in terms of the soul but sugg­ested that: “[I]t is some form of radioactivity made visible by the use of the chemical screen. My experiments, however, seem to prove that it is the animating power, or current of life of human beings.”

Shortly afterwards, it was announced in the press that a race had developed between O’Donnell and Duncan MacDougall as to who could be the first to photograph the human soul, a feat which had thus far eluded Walter Kilner. The New York Times greeted this news with sceptic­ism: “We rely upon Drs O’Donnell and MacDougall for further authentic photo­graphs and weights of the animating power, the etheric project­ion, the current of life, the last breath, the soul substance or whatever it may be called to make possible [..] a substitute for the customary word-pict­ures of the sea serpent.”

This article claimed to have interviewed MacDougall, but the surgeon denied this and wrote to the paper, complaining that: “I am not about to conduct experiments for obtaining pictures of the human soul.” He went on to explain that, while the human soul was “substantial and space occupying [..] it could not be made the subject of photography” because its refractive index was identical to that to the “ether of space”.

This angry missive dates from July 1911 and is the last comment I have found by MacDougall on the subject of his earlier research, but it seems to confirm that his opinions on the subject of the soul remained unchanged with time.

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/3445/soul_catcher.html

哈佛教授證明了靈魂存在現象！
來源： 文匯論壇
發佈者：崔艷偉
時間：2010年5月15日 12:43

美國時間5月3日下午，哈佛大學著名物理學家、量子物理學家美女教授麗莎·藍道爾（LisaRundall)向媒體宣稱，經過9年的精心研究和無數次的試驗，稱靈魂確實存在！

美國時間5月3日下午，哈佛大學著名物理學家、量子物理學家美女教授麗莎·藍道爾（LisaRundall)向媒體宣稱，自2001年來聯合美國著名物理學家JohnSwegle、康涅狄克大學的心理學教授肯耐斯－瑞恩（KennethRing）博士、荷蘭Rijnstate醫院心血管中心的沛姆－凡－拉曼爾醫生（PimVanLommel）、美國著名心理學家雷蒙－穆迪博士、英國著名外科醫生山姆－帕尼爾研究靈魂是否存在的科學證據，經過9年的精心研究和無數次的試驗。已經取得了突破性的進展，證明靈魂確實存在，有望將在2012年向全人類莊嚴宣告靈魂存在的最權威的科學證據。屆時人們不得不佩服人類祖先的智慧，在幾千年前就認為有靈魂存在。
同時麗莎·藍道爾也擔心，一旦科學界公佈靈魂存在的證據，世界上很多人將不懼怕死亡，自殺或極端事件也將上升。這是她不希望看到的結果
第五維研究者：哈佛大學量子物理學家美女教授麗莎·藍道爾
科學家們試圖通過粒子對撞機探索量子宇宙，重現約140億年前誕生宇宙的大爆炸後的情形。
哈佛美女教授挑戰愛因斯坦，認為還有另一個神秘空間和世界存在———
在哈佛大學的一間實驗室裡，一位女教授正在做一個核裂變的實驗。突然，她發現一個微粒竟然離奇地消失得無影無蹤。它會跑到哪兒去？女教授大膽提出一個新的設想：我們的世界中存在一個人類所看不到的第五維空間。
這就是登上《時代》「100名最有影響力人物」之一，被公認為當今全球最權威的額外維度物理學家的哈佛美女教授麗莎·藍道爾。
麗莎·藍道爾大膽的設想立刻引起了國際物理學界的震驚。要知道，根據愛因斯坦的廣義相對論，人類生存的三維空間加上時間軸，構成的是「四維時空」。於是，哈佛美女教授挑戰愛因斯坦的消息一時傳遍了全球。
那麼，這個神秘的第五維空間到底是什麼？本報記者通過電子郵件聯繫到了這位美女教授麗莎·藍道爾。

實驗中的微粒離奇消失了
「在我的一次實驗中，一些微粒莫名其妙地消失了，我認為它們是跑到了我們看不到的另外的空間裡去了。它們其實離我們並不遙遠，只是很好的隱藏了起來。」麗莎·藍道爾說。
藍道爾將這個「我們看不到的空間」稱為「第五維空間」。
如果藍道爾所說的第五維空間存在，那麼為什麼我們會看不到它？藍道爾教授解釋說：「這個額外存在的維度非常微小，如果某些事物足夠的小，你就不能夠感受到它的存在。」
中國科學院理論物理研究所的研究員李淼給我們打了一個比方。這就好比我們看來就是一根線的物體，如果用放大鏡觀察，就可以發現其實裡面還有另外的世界———裡面的纖維有粗有細，有不同的方向。
這就是我們看不見藍道爾教授假設的第五維空間的原因，因為維度太小了。

美女教授挑戰愛因斯坦「四維時空」
麗莎·藍道爾的大膽設想震驚了國際物理學界。
有觀點認為，這位哈佛美女教授是對愛因斯坦提出了挑戰。因為根據愛因斯坦的廣義相對論，我們的世界是「四維」的。
李淼解釋說，「四維」是一個時空的概念。它是指人類存在的三維空間再加上一個時間。這是愛因斯坦在他的《廣義相對論》和《狹義相對論》中提及的概念。我們的宇宙是由時間和空間構成；時空的關係，是在空間的架構上，即在普通三維空間的長、寬、高三條軸外，又加上了一條時間軸。
李淼教授是國內研究高度空間的專家之一，他告訴記者，藍道爾教授的研究應該說是愛因斯坦「四維時空」理論的延伸。研究高度空間是為了將我們現在所知道的力統一起來。比如電磁力和引力，因為在我們這個低維度空間裡看起來表現形式不同的各種力，在更高維度的空間裡可能就是一個力。

第五維空間引出另一個未知世界
在藍道爾教授的理論中，如果第五維空間真的存在，那麼很可能還存在著另一個神秘的三維世界。
這就是說，我們人類生活在一個無限大的五維空間中，不過，我們只能感知到其中的四維———空間和時間，另有一個維度我們無法看見。然而，就在這五個維度共同組成的空間中，還有另一個不為我們所知的三維世界存在。
藍道爾告訴記者，那個「世界」的物質組成將完全不同於我們所能感知的這個世界———其化學成分和存在的力與我們的世界全然不同。在第五維空間，唯一與我們分享的就是重力。只有重力產生的能量，可以穿梭於兩個不同的「世界」。
目前，科學家們正在努力找出重力以外可以穿梭於兩個不同「世界」的其他物質。這樣一來，就可以找出存在於五維空間中的世界，甚至發現時光隧道。不過，藍道爾認為，人類目前還沒有能力離開賴以生存的這個世界。

「第五維空間」將被進行驗證
如果發現了第五維空間，就可以解決物理界一直以來的一個謎團：與電磁力和其他力相比，重力為什麼會如此脆弱？比如，一塊小小的磁鐵就可以將曲別針吸起來，要知道，磁鐵的對手事實上是擁有地心引力的整個星球！
藍道爾透露說，最快在明年（2011年），她就可以把「第五維空間」從假設變成全新的理論。
這是因為，歐洲原子核研究中心(CERN)目前正在瑞士和法國的邊境地下100多米深處，興建一台世界規模最大的大型粒子對撞機（博主記得克里昂提到過這個對撞機，好像是說它產生的理論將會引領人類走向未來的新時代，估計說的是不是就是這個大新聞？）。粒子對撞機正式投入使用後，便可觀察是不是有粒子消失，進入了人類看不到的「第五維空間」。屆時，一條周長27公里的環形隧道將把兩束質子加速到接近光速，然後讓它們以每秒8億次的速率迎面相撞，釋放出大量比質子更小的粒子，從而重現宇宙形成時發生大爆炸的情形。如果屆時有粒子消失無蹤，就可以證實後者進入了人類看不到的「第五度空間」。

粒子質量為何離奇增加
早在1919年，波蘭人T卡盧茲就將愛因斯坦的廣義相對論推廣到「五維時空」。之後，另一位科學家O克雷恩將其發展而形成了新的KaluzaKlein理論。
藍道爾教授說，在KaluzaKlein模型中，存在這樣一些粒子，它們的一些物理特性讓人們感到很奇怪，比如質量。在這個模型裡，這些粒子的質量總是莫名其妙地增加了。這些增加的質量是哪來的呢？
「我們認為，這些質量一定跟額外維度空間中產生的動力有關。」藍道爾說，「它們依靠額外空間中的幾何學存在，而這個額外維度空間可能就是看不見的第五度空間。所以，我們要想尋找第五度空間，其中一種方法就是尋找這樣一些粒子。」

美女教授最具影響人物之一
現年45歲的麗莎曾因美貌榮登美國《時尚》雜誌，被譽為哈佛美女教授。身為哈佛大學理論物理學專業的博士，麗莎多年來潛心研究引力、時空的額外維度、膜宇宙模型和弦理論。她的代表著作《彎曲的旅行：揭開隱藏著的宇宙維度之謎》一書，由於深入淺出地談論了人類身處其中的宇宙故事，一舉入選《紐約時報》2005年「100本最佳暢銷書」之列。2007年，麗莎被美國《時代》雜誌評選為全球「100名最有影響力人物」之一，被公認為當今全球最權威的額外維度物理學家。
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