UNTIL THE last years of the nineteenth century, physicists believed that the
rocks, metals, water, wood, and all the other substances about us are ultimately
composed of atoms of one or more of some seventy-eight kinds - those atoms, as the
very word signifies, being indivisible, i.e., not themselves composed of more
minute parts.
Since then, however, the progress of physics has revealed the sub-atomic
electrons, protons, neutrons, positrons, mesons, etc. The sub-atomic "particles"
are at distances from one another that are vast relatively to their own size, so
that a material object, such as a table, turns out to consist mostly of space
empty of anything more substantial than electric charges or electromagnetic
fields.
This state of affairs is what is meant by the statement occasionally heard that
modern physics has "dematerialized" matter - from which it is sometimes concluded
that the traditionally sharp distinction between matter and mind, or material
and mental, has been invalidated or at least undermined.
Yet, if in the dark one walks into a table, one does not pass through it but
gets a bruise. Whatever may be the recondite subatomic constitution of the table
and of other "solid" objects, they do anyway have the capacity to resist
penetration by other such objects. Physics has not dematerialized matter in the
sense of having shown that wood, water, air, living bodies, and other familiar
substances do not really have the properties we perceive them to have. What
physics has shown is that their familiar properties are very different indeed
from those of their sub-atomic constituents.
1. Two questions to be distinguished
The allegation that physics has now shown
that the things we call material are not really material rests only on a failure
to distinguish between two quite different questions.
One of them is about the nature of the ultimate constituents of all material
things and about the laws governing the relations of those constituents to one
another. This is the question to which theoretical physics addresses itself. The
task of answering it is long, highly technical, and still unfinished. And the
answers, so far as they have yet been obtained, have no obvious bearing on the
problem of the possibility or reality of a life after death.
The other question is on the contrary easy to answer; and the answer, as we
shall eventually see, has bearing on the validity or invalidity of some of the
considerations alleged to rule out survival. The only thing difficult about the
second question is to realize that we already know perfectly well the answer to
it, and that our failure to notice this is due only to the fact that we do not
clearly distinguish the second question from the first.
For purposes of contrast, the first may be phrased: What do physicists find when
they search for the ultimate constituents of the things we call "material?" On
the other hand, the second but of course methodologically prior question is: Which things are the ones
called "material?"
2. Which things are "material?"
The answer to the second of these two questions
obviously is that the things called "material" are the rocks, air, water,
plants, animal bodies, and so on, about us; that is, comprehensively, the
substances, processes, events, relations, characteristics, etc., that are
perceptually public or can be made so.
No doubt is possible that, originally and fundamentally, these things are the
ones denominated "material" or "physical;" i.e., that they are the ones
denoted - pointed at - by these names. Moreover, unless the physicist already knew,
thus as a matter of linguistic usage, that those things are the ones we refer to
when we speak of "material" things, he would not even know which things are the
ones whose ultimate constituents we are asking him to investigate and to reveal
to us.
The point, then, which is here crucial is that the objects, events, etc., that
are perceptually public are called "material" or "physical" not because
technical research had detected as hidden in all of them some recondite
peculiarity that constituted their materiality, but simply because some name was
needed - and the name, "material," was adopted - by which to refer comprehensively
to all perceptually public things.
The case with regard to these things and to our calling them "material" is thus
parallel in all essentials to that of a given boy called George. He is not so
called because scrutiny of him after birth disclosed to his parents presence in
him of a peculiar characteristic, to wit, Georgeness. Rather, "George" is simply
the name or tag assigned to him by his parents in order to be able to refer to
him without actually pointing at him. Similarly, "material" or "physical" is
simply the name or tag assigned by custom to the part of the world that is
perceptually public or is capable of being made so.
Hence the question as to what recondite peculiarities are possessed by material
things is intelligible at all and is capable at all of being empirically
investigated, only after one knows which things are the ones to be examined in
order to answer it; that is, knows which things are the ones named "material" -
just as one can discover the recondite peculiarities of George only after one
knows which boy is the one named George.
3. "Material," derivatively vs. fundamentally
Something, however, must now be
added to the statement made above that, originally and fundamentally, what the
expressions "the material world" or "the physical world" denote is the things,
events, processes, characteristics, etc., that are or can be made perceptually
public.
The addition called for is that, secondly and derivatively, those expressions
denote also the minute or otherwise unperceivable constituents of whatever is or
can be made perceptually public. The existence and the characteristics of these
recondite constituents are discovered, not of course by perceptual observation
of them since they are not perceptible; but by theoretical inference from
certain perceived occurrences which turn out to be inexplicable and
unpredictable except on the supposition that they are effects of certain
processes among unperceivable constituents of the perceived things -
constituents, namely, having the very properties in terms of which we define the
nature of the "atoms," "electrons," etc., which we postulate exist. The reality
of these is then confirmed empirically in so far as the postulating of them
turns out to enable us to predict and sometimes to control occurrences that are
capable of being perceived but that until then had remained unobserved or
unexplained.
The title, then, of those recondite theoretical entities and events to be called
"material" or "physical" is not, like that of trees, stones, water, etc., that
they are perceptually public since they are not so; but that they are
existentially implicit in the things that are perceptually public.
4. What is "living."
In an article circulated to newspapers by the Associated
Press early in December 1957, Dr. Selman Waksman, Nobel prize winner in biology,
rightly points out that the question whether life after death is possible cannot
be answered until its meaning has first been made clear. He then proceeds - to
define the meaning he attaches to "life" and to "death" by listing certain
observable and measurable functions - growth, metabolism, respiration,
reproduction, adaptation to environment, and intelligence - as being those
which, together, differentiate living from non-living material and constitute
the "life" of the former; and by defining "death" as termination of those
functions.
After some technical biological elaboration, he comes to the conclusion that
"any belief in life after death is in disagreement with all the accumulated
wisdom and knowledge of modem biology" - a conclusion, however, which,
notwithstanding its impressive allusion to biological science, then reduces to
the mere truism that when the functions constituting life terminate they do not
persist!
But, as we stated briefly at the beginning of Chapt. I, there are two senses in
which a man may be said to "live." One is the biological sense, defined as by
Dr. Waksman in terms of certain public, measurable processes. The other is the
psychological sense. It is defined in terms of occurrence of states of
consciousness - occurrence of the sensations, images, feelings, emotions,
attitudes, thoughts, desires, etc., privately experienced directly by each of
us: that a man is "living" in the psychological sense means that ones and others
of these keep occurring. Moreover life, in this psychological sense of the term,
is what man essentially prizes and is usually what he means when he speaks of a
"life" after the death and decay of the body.
A biologist would of course be likely to say that, anyway, states of
consciousness are effects of certain of the processes going on in bodies that
are biologically "living"; and hence that when these die the stream of states of
consciousness necessarily terminates. But this does not logically follow from
the known facts; for although the biologist knows that some states of
consciousness are effects of bodily processes, he does not know but only piously
postulates that all of them without exception are so. Moreover, he does not know
that some at least of the states of consciousness which certain bodily processes
cause might not possibly be causable also in some other way, and hence might not
go on occurring after biological life terminates. In any case, the question as
to whether they then can or do go on is not answered by the truism that when
biological life terminates, it does not continue.
Dr. Waksman's conclusion that biological life after biological death is
biologically impossible escapes vacuousness only if taken to refer specifically
to the idea that "life after death" means resurrection of the flesh; that is,
(a) reconstitution of the body after it has died and its material has been
dispersed by decay or by worms, vultures, sharks, or cremation; and then, (b)
resumption in the reconstituted body of the processes of growth, metabolism,
respiration, etc., which constitute biological "life."
Such reconstitution and resumption is what indeed is "in disagreement with all
the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of modern biology."
The distinction between biological and psychological life having now been made
sharp, it is appropriate to notice that, in the case of either, being alive is
not a matter of wholly or not at all. When the body is in coma, under anesthesia,
in a faint, or in deep sleep, the processes of "vegetative" life still go on,
but such bodily activities as eating, drinking, seeking food, hiding from or
fighting enemies, etc., which are typical of the body's "animal" life, are in
abeyance, as well as the bodily activities distinctive of "human" life -
examples of which would be speaking, writing, reading, constructing instruments
and operating them, trading, and the other "cultural" activities.
In the psychological life of human beings, various levels may likewise be
distinguished. The neonate's psychological life comprises only sensations,
feelings, emotions, and blind impulses. Memory, association of ideas,
expectations, conscious purpose, do not yet enter into it. Soon, however, some
states of consciousness come to function as signs - signs of events or facts
other than themselves. At later stages of individual development, psychological
life at a given time may consist only of uncontrolled dreaming, whether by day
or night. At other times psychological life is on the contrary active -
inventive, heuristic, critical, consciously purposive. And it is conceivable
that, if there is any life in the psychological sense after biological death,
such life may consist of only certain ones of these various kinds of
psychological processes.
Contents |
Previous Chapter | Next Chapter
|