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THE PHYSICS OF SOUL

The Discovery Channel once ran a program titled, “Hell, the Devil's Domain.” Throughout this two hour presentation the word “soul” was used often, and used in the context of different religions. Not once was soul defined. This implies that soul is a commonly known word with a widely accepted definition. But is it?

Consider the primary definition from Webster's Dictionary:

Soul:
1. the principle of life, feelings, thought and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical.

   This definition defines soul as a principle, but declares that it is thought to be “a distinct entity.” Huh? Since when are principles equivalent to or in any way related to entities?

   If nothing else, this obvious contradiction illustrates some confusion over the nature of soul. The secondary definition does slightly better:



2. the spiritual part of humans regarded in its moral aspect, or as believed to survive death and be subject to happiness or misery in a life to come.

   To squeeze any meaning from the “moral aspect” clause we'd have to beat it to death, but the second part of this definition is a fair description of Christian dogma.

One of the editors who evaluated this material offered her personal understanding:

“Soul is the part of people which allows them to touch their immortality. They want to believe in something beyond this life experience. Soul is that part of themselves which allows them to connect with that possibility.”

The intent of this page is to propose a more powerful definition of the soul, one which eliminates the dictionary's indecison, retains our editor's sense of mysticism, and moves soul into the realm of the tangible. With luck, this enhanced soul-concept will be so well defined that examples of the real thing can someday be detected with suitable instrumentation.

There are more ideas about the nature of soul than there are religions, since several sects have multiple soul-concepts. They are irrelevant here because we are effectively declaring them all wrong and adding another (the correct version, of course) to the pile. A reader seeking an exhaustive list of soul-concepts might check out Wikipedia's analysis of soul.

Exploring the Definitions

The principle of life, feelings, thought and action in humans&hellip

Our dictionary's definition specifically describes soul not simply as a principle, not one of several principles, but as the principle of life, feelings, etc. It also restricts soul to humans. This implies that were any human to lose his soul, he would immediately drop dead. If the soul is that important, one would expect it to have been discovered by now. Nope. Any coroner who puts “loss of soul” in the cause-of-death section of an autopsy report will soon be out job hunting.

How exactly does the soul as a principle of life fit in this context? Whatever it does cannot be terribly important, since cockroaches have managed to thrive without souls, running little roach programs which people who cannot make clear distinctions confuse with little roach thoughts.

Members of this confused crowd typically declare that rocks have souls. However, their definition of soul is limited to, “something common to humans, insects, and rocks.” Perhaps they've mistaken souls for atoms.

Clearly, whatever the soul might be, it is not essential to either human or animal life. Moreover, the notion of the soul as a “principle” belongs to the realm of mysticism, not of tangibility. Therefore we shall discard the entire first clause of dictionary definition number one, leaving us with this: …a distinct entity separate from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical.

Soul as an entity is something we can work with, provided that we can define the entity. Unfortunately, the second part of that definition secrets the soul behind that mysterious spiritual curtain religions have long used to shield their beliefs from scientific inquiry. But does it really belong there?

The science of physics got its start by studying the behavior of matter, and in the process discovered something called energy. Unlike matter which can be seen, touched, heard and smelled, energy was intangible— almost spiritual— but extremely useful. For example, we cannot see matter without the energy form known as light. We cannot touch matter at all— we touch the electric fields surrounding it.

While people commonly use the words “physical” and “material” as if they were synonymous, they are not. This linguistic slop needs to be mopped up, because a distinction between these words will facilitate understanding.

In the science of physics, material simmply means made of matter. Physical means more than that, for it also includes the energy fields and forces which interact with matter.

The universe is commonly referred to as the physical universe rather than the material universe because there is much more to it than simply matter.

It follows that if the human soul interacts with any part of the human body, even if only the electromagnetic fields within our brains, it too is physical.

The Concept of Spirit

Although the concept of soul is common to all human cultures, what if it was newly discovered today? Would it be categorized as something outside the matter and energy universe, something which cannot be studied with the tools of physics? Is it not more likely that our first approach would be to regard the soul as a new force, or as a newly discovered form of energy?

We propose that the notion of spirit as an entity be retired, or at least not applied to the soul. If the soul or any entity with remotely similar properties exists in interaction with human bodies, it is, by definition, a physical entity.

The Soul as a Separate Entity

Despite the common understanding among virtually all religions that the soul is somehow connected with the human body, Webster's definitions speak only of separation and disconnection— the soul is regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body— the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical.

This distinction is supported by normal speech. Those who believe in a soul invariably refer to their soul, your soul, or our souls. This implies that the soul is something we as human beings happen to own. We naturally refer to our clothes and our pets in the possessive sense because they are separate from us. We own our body parts, even though we would prefer to keep them with us. But is it correct to use soul in the same possessive sense?

When asked what the soul actually is, Christians and followers of derivative sects will often reply, consistently with the final clause of Webster's definitions, “It's the part of us that goes to heaven or hell when we die.”

If so, what is the nature of this mysterious part? It must have some properties which make its arrival in heaven a desirable outcome. Consider— if promised that your reward for leading a righteous life was that your liver would spend eternity in heaven, would you care?

The only component of your self which can possibly appreciate heaven, hell, or any other continued state of existence is that part of you which is conscious.

The Chooser

We make choices for good, bad, or indifference. Religions teach that those choices determine how we fare in an afterlife. If so, must not the thing which makes the choices bear their consequences?

What is this choice maker if not the conscious mind?

But then, what kind of mind can operate the body and yet survive its death? And what about the brain, the wonderfully complex biological mechanism universally regarded as the organ of thought? How might it be related to the soul, the mind, or whatever entity might convey personal consciousness into an interesting afterlife?

It is time to reach past formal definitions and beyond religious beliefs for an understanding of soul that makes practical sense, yet satisfies our editor's desire to connect with the possibility of her personal immortality.

Objectifying the Mystical

The first step in extracting the soul-concept from its present quagmire of mystical confusion is to inquire into its properties. For example…

• Exactly what does the soul do?


• What is its relationship to the human brain/body system?


• How did it come into being?


• If created by another entity, to what purpose?

A Physical Soul

Suppose that a scientist was to seek the soul, not in church but in a physics laboratory. Success requires this:

1. A soul must actually exist.


2. It must have properties which permit its detection.

   Inferential detection is permissible, provided it is done according to scientific standards. Radio waves offer an example— they cannot be seen, heard, or touched. We cannot photograph them. Yet they certainly exist.



3. A theoretical model of the soul which includes these properties must be developed.

   Radio waves are only detectable with specialized instrumentation, which was also required for their original discovery. Electromagnetic transmitters and receivers are not built by guys tinkering at random.

   The experimental discovery of radio waves by Heinrich Hertz in 1888 followed their theoretical prediction by James Clerk Maxwell fifteen years earlier, in a set of four elegant differential equations describing the dynamic relationships between electricity and magnetism.

   Likewise, the actual discovery of a real, physical soul will follow development of a suitable theoretical model.

General Properties of Soul

If the soul is connected to the human brain so as to be responsible for human behavior, soul must have at least these properties:

• It must be capable of thought.


• The soul must have some form of memory.


• It must be able to perceive and interpret sensory information in the forms occurring within the brain.


• It must be conscious, or at least potentially conscious.


• Soul must be able to control the voluntary actions of the human body, which implies interactive control of the brain's cortex.

  This is a normal but not an essential property, in that the others could exist without it.



• Although not material, the soul must be physical.

  As noted earlier, the words physical and material are not synonymous in this context. Anything which interacts with some part of the physical universe is, by definition, physical. The soul must interact with the brain, therefore it too is physical.



• The soul's properties of thought and sentience must persist (or be potentially capable of persisting) independently of the human brain— otherwise post-death survival would be pointless.

  What would be the value of living forever in heaven while blind, deaf, totally senseless, and incapable of retrieving a memory or having a thought? You would be spending eternity in a coma.

A New Word

The above properties are required by an entity which is to survive the death of a human body in some functional manner. These properties are not listed in any Bible, taught in religion class, or discussed in houses of worship. They describe an entity whose existence might be empirically verified— not the vaguely defined soul of religious doctrine. This entity deserves a word of its own— our choice is beon.

The word “beon” was invented by Charles Slaughter of Kitt Peak National Observatory in 1977. It is derived from, “be”, implying existence, and, “-on”, a suffix commonly denoting subatomic fundamental particles as in the words proton, electron, or meson.

We will use this word carefully. We never use it interchangeably with soul, because beon represents an entirely different concept. Should you choose to use this word, remember that beon is not a passive, vaguely defined entity. It refers to that part of you which is conscious and has the option to control your body.

Whereas the phrase “your soul” is common in speech, use of the parallel phrase, “your beon,” would demonstrate a dreadful misunderstanding of the concept. You are a beon and you have a body.

Simplicity

From the above list of properties, beon might initially appear to be a fairly complex entity. This is not so. Beon is an extremely simple entity— the simplest of all things which might be regarded as entities.

In its natural state beon does not manifest the properties outlined above, such as memory and consciousness. Beon in its natural state is unstructured and unconscious. It possesses only one property other than existence— the ability to exert a single force.

This happens to be an extremely useful force, without which the universe would not exist. It will be explained in a subsequent page right after your course in basic thermodynamics.

Beon and Brain

If our theory is close to the mark, the human brain is more than an enlarged primate brain because it will include a connection to beon.

This kind of stuff can get technical, so we will expand upon it in more detail later. The following introduction to beon-brain mechanics is provided so that the alert reader will realize that we are not blowing off this issue.

Digital and Analog

Digital means countable. Those of us who learned to count the easy way used our fingers, otherwise known as digits. Analog stuff cannot be counted or broken up into little bits.

Imagine that you are a little kid at an ocean beach, equipped with two small buckets. You scoop up a bucket of sand and another bucket of water. Let's pretend that you are extremely patient, do not watch TV, read books, or have friends. Having nothing better to do with your time, you bring the buckets home to count your day's winnings.

First you count the sand grains, one at a time, perhaps with the assistance of a pair of fine-tipped tweezers and magnifying glass. This will take a long but finite time, and can be done precisely, without missing a single grain.

However, if you also brought home a bucket of water, you would not be able to count the water. You might weigh it or measure its volume in terms of drops or teaspoons, but cannot count it. Water is an analog form.

Of course that is true only from our limited, large scale perspective. When we examine water at the atomic level, we find that it is composed of discrete molecules and is therefore digital. The molecules cannot be counted like sand grains, but their number can be estimated.

Analog involves a continuum of movement, whereas digital implies discrete bursts of activity. Those of us who've watched old science fiction movies have seen a display of sinusoidal (sine) waves on an oscillscope, a pattern of electrical energy smoothly flowing between peaks and troughs. A suitable oscilloscope connected to the internal circuits of a digital computer would see “square waves,” rectulangular patterns showing electrical energy displayed like the output of a simple light switch— either on of off.

We see motion as an analog thing, a continuum of activity. When we watch a movie, we see the same continuum of motion that we observe in real life. But when we go behind the scenes, we find that there is no real motion at all. The movie film consists of a strip of still photographs. This strip is fed through a machine which displays the photographs on a screen, one at a time, typically 24 per second.

Because our eyes and brain cannot resolve what is actually happening, we perceive analog motion instead of digital frames.

The Interface

• If our theory is valid, the brain must have neural circuitry specifically designed for its interface to beon. This is a subject which we will open now and expand upon later.


• Researchers have adopted a model of brain activity which depends upon the transfer of discrete electrical charges between neurons. In the context of this model, the brain is a digital device.

  The “brain waves” which can be detected at the surface of the skull are considered to be artifacts, mere analog byproducts of neural activity which play no part in the transfer of information within the brain. However, beon theory requires an analog interface to the brain. This implies that brain waves play an active part in human mental activity.

  We know of two experiments, one electrical, the other neurological, supporting this possibility.

  
  

  Configuration

  The brain is a binary mechanism, its right hemisphere controlling mostly the left side of the body, and vice versa. Beon, however, is a single entity. This suggests an interesting possibility, that beon might be directly connected to only one of the brain's hemispheres.
  
  

  HANDEDNESS

  This would explain the phenomenon of handedness in humans, which appears to be a uniquely human characteristic. The brain hemisphere to which beon is directly connected is preferentially used for tasks which require skill and mental focus, such as writing and throwing.

  Primates are ambidextrous, meaning that any given task can be learned equally well by either hand.

  
  

  CONSEQUENCES of a SPLIT BRAIN

  Beon's connection to a particular hemisphere easily explains the bizarre behavior of humans who have undergone “split brain” surgery, in which the corpus callosum, a cable of nerves connecting the brain hemispheres, is severed. This prevents the two hemispheres from communicating with one another.

  One effect of this radical surgery is to restrict self-awareness to the dominant hemisphere. A right-handed split-brained person quite literally does not know what his left hand is doing, unless he watches it.

  
  

  IDENTIFYING the SUBCONSCIOUS

• Psychologists have identified three components of the human mind— the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious. None of these have been effectively related to specific sections of the brain. There is no particular brain area which is responsible for the function called the “conscious mind.” The same is true for the subconscious and superconscious minds.

  The physical world (the one in which scientists claim to operate) consists of cause-effect relationships. For every observable function there is supposed to be a mechanism or interconnected set of mechanisms which produces the function.

  From the perspective of science the soul cannot exist because there is no mechanism for it. Yet the subconscious, conscious, and superconscious minds, which also lack corresponding mechanisms, are treated as if they are real things. This hardly seems fair.

  We can eliminate this problem by defining two functions of the human mind in terms of mechanisms:

  • The mechanism behind the subconscious mind is the entire brain, with the exception of whatever “tuner” neurocircuitry connects beon to brain.
  
  
  • The physical mechanism behind the seldom identified superconscious mind is beon.
  
  
  • The conscious mind is the functional effect of beon and brain working together.

    We will refer to this brain-beon function as the human mind, conscious mind, or simply the mind.

  
  

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  Later on we will use this simple theory to explain some poorly understood human behavior such as hypnosis. The theory also provides a base for understanding psychic phenomena, and offers useful insights into human psychology. Because the general theory affects all aspects of what it means to be human, it naturally offers ways to create an optimal life.

  Two very important properties of beon remain to be discussed. Its relationship to energy, the stuff of the universe, will be explained in another three or four pages. The next page will examine an issue which separates Beon Theory entirely from Judeo-Christianity and most derivative belief systems— the origin of beon.

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  Sat 06/05/10 21:27
  
  
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