Anatomy of a Soul

Before I initiate my comments, I would like to caution readers that the content may be offensive to those who hold a strict adherence to the theocratic concept of a soul. Hence, Reader beware!

FOREWARD

Just like many other questions that we ask ourselves almost on daily basis, this question has been disturbing me for quite some time. There’s got to be an explanation that is logical and that does not depend on ’Faith’. In my view, the word faith is a simple admittance towards failure of knowing. We have to ’believe’ what we cannot logically explain, and thus we have to have ’faith’ to move onward, without getting bogged down in complex logical excursions, that may or may not result in any conclusion. Hence an easy way out. But what if we do want to take those excursions and feel our way through and adopt an attitude that relates more to knowing, rather than believing. Is this going to put us in some sort of a category? I would hate to be labelled... and would prefer myself to belong to open minded school of thought. I am like that small boat that is sailing in a wide open sea of knowledge. Where and what will I come across, will determine my path of consciousness. I intend to enjoy the journey, rather than be captive of a certain current and locked in towards a certain journey. Why let others drive my life, when I am what I am and would not settle for what others would like me to be. I’d like to experience new things and new ideas, new concepts. I would love to be an audience and appreciate the uniqueness and the individuality of people and events that come accross.

Having said the above, I would hope that the reader would also open up their mind and not reject the theories and precepts that are put forth in this discussion. Tomorrow I may be writing a totally different conclusion based on what knowledge I will have gained, and what lense am I looking from. Yes, it is all relative. But that’s what makes it ever more interesting.

WHAT ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS THOUGHT?
I read through the dialogues of Socrates (Actually Plato, since to this day critics argue that Plato’s writings of Socrates’ dialoges are deeply imbued with his own philosophies). Anyway, it was interesting to see how Socrates described a Soul ( I wish I could remember the book that contains this dialogue, but the best way to get to it, is to go to www.gutenberg.org, where you can find an immense collection of historic books and essays). To describe Socrates’ concept of a soul, the work ’incarnation’ would be appropriate. According to him the Souls were created by gods and they rest in a repository. Each time a human is born, a soul is breathed into the body and that soul remains with that body for the duration of the body’s life and after separation (death), it goes back to that repository and the process goes on. I am not sure if the same soul goes back into another body, or each soul has a unique identity and gathers an account of good or evil during its short span of entrapment in the body. Hence the concept of eternal happiness and eternal pain for a soul based on its deeds during the ’human’ life span.

This concept itself raises a lot of questions in my mind, and therefore, not fully satisfied with the concept. I then moved on to Aristotle. Now, Aristotle was Plato’s student, and it may seem that the student may have been influenced by his teacher’s doctrines, yet I found his narrative quite interesting. He, in his book ’De Anima’ argues on different concepts that, of course, can be understood in the context of the time during which Aristotle lived (384 - 322 BC)... and those relate with interesting observations such as the relationship of a soul with motion. It was an interesting definition. That which moves and is moved, a description initiated by Democritus, but included by Aristotle to move the argument forward. He then adds the complexity of proportions and parts that form as a whole and thus the concept of ’Harmony’ to achieve the ’form’, a term that he used right in the beginning of his book ’De Anima’.

Interesting but complex, at least for me....

MY DEFINITION:
So what is a soul then? I will be addressing the question on the basis of science, as science is common to understanding of all. Moerover, science is logical while theology is founded on faith... belief of the unknown!

From what little I know of human body, it is a very complex state-of-the-art machine that has evolved over millions of years. The first vertibrae known to science existed some 300 million years ago. It is a long enough time for a body, be it a human or an animal, to acquire adequate knowledge by its core particals (genes)and evolve into forms and shapes that exist today. Why so many forms and shapes of living things exist today and what determined the direction each specie took? I do believe that environment, circumstances, events, and many other factors affect the evolution process, and an infinitsimal occurance can trigger a chain that can result in changes that can be significant over a period of time. A simple and interesting example is of those fish that were found in a cave, that did not have any eyes.

One other characteristic that differentiates our kind from other living things, is our cognitive abilities. Brain is found in very many animals but it is only humans that enjoy this ability. Not too long ago, about 40,000 years ago, we did have another human specie known as Neanderthals that walked this earth besides Homo Sapiens. Before them, extinct specie of Homo Erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis and many others also walked this earth... so humans too has had different species, just like any other animals, plants, and insects. It is also deduced that more than 90% species were wiped out almost 200 million years ago, dinosaurs are the most well known. Hence, I would equate humans as part of the over all life form that exists on this planet and that has too gone through various phases of extinction and evolution and has broght us to what we are today. Was it a part of an ’Intelligent Design’? I don’t know. However, I do give a lot of weight on how Socrates attempted to address it. According to him (and it may not be exactly what he or Plato said) if we rewind the evolution process till the very first particle that resulted in the initiation of life on this earth or fort that matter, in this known universe, we have to accept the fact that that particle did not come out of ’Nothing’, since it is scientifically impossible to create something out of nothing. Therefore, there has to exist an entity (God) who does not have a beginning or the end, and is responsible for creating the particle that evolved into this Universe, and by all measures this universe is HUGE! beyond our perception, and so on... so, yes there is such a power. But in what form he exists, is very difficult to comprehend. That being said, the chain reaction that did get initiated at some point somewhere out there, eventually resulted in the existance of this earth and then ourselves. But looking back at how this earth has evolved and transformed over a period of more than two billion years, and how life initiated and evolved into what it is today, it would not, in my mind, be difficult to understand what we are. It is a journey that is still going on and will continue for as long as... well, eternity..

When I said that we know, at least, what we are, is a safe statement based on the knowledge that we have today. Our human body is a marvel, and that’s for sure. But then, if we had 300 million years of age each and all this time we could spend in learning and developing, I think it would not be difficult to imagine what we can become. So here we are... with this beautiful body and of course the all powerful human mind. Our genes carry 300 million years worth of knowledge and it has rendered us with this system that is profoundly wonderous.

So now that we have this beautiful body and a great mind, where did this soul come from?

Here is how I would like to put it.

Man through the ages has been addressing these questions, among others. However, the thinkers of those times, such as the likes of Socrates and Aristotles based on their reasoning on the acquired knowledge of that time. Would it not be nice if we could wake those people up today, give them all the knowledge about human body, that we have today, and then ask them once again, what is a soul? I am pretty sure the conclusions are going to be pretty different from what they percieved in their own times.

So what do we know about human body that people in those days did not know. They did not know about the DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid —usually in the form of a double helix— that contains the genetic instructions specifying the biological development of all cellular forms of life, and most viruses. Source: Wikipedia.org). They did not understand the composition of human brain and its cell structure that comprise of Neurons (conducting cells of the nervous system. A typical neuron consists of a cell body, containing the nucleus and the surrounding cytoplasm (perikaryon); several short radiating processes (dendrites); and one long process (the axon), which terminates in twiglike branches (telodendrons) and may have branches (collaterals) projecting along its course. Source: http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?query=neurons&act ion=Search+OMD)

In my view, this kind of knowledge can make a significant impact on the resoning that philosophers apply to the definition of terms such as the topic of this discussion, Soul.

Going back to the arguments that Socrates and Aristotle put forth, I would discount the one that was put forth by Socrates (or Plato), and would consider what Aristotle was defining a soul to be, that is, ’that which moves and is moved’. So a motion is something that is determining the difference between life and death? That means something that can ’move’ itself is ’alive’? Very much so. Moreover, they are inseparable, ’that’ which moves the body and thus is moved by the body, because of its motion. Hence, motion is a determining factor. So how does this motion come to be?

Lets again jump forward to our reference to the knowledge that we have today. We know that our genes carry the information that was used in the development of our human body. What is this ’knowledge’? Well, can I say that this is that knowledge that has been accumulated over millions of years that we have existed? This means that our body holds the secret of the right ’combination’ that produces ’Life’. The word combination may be a loose term, but it is a collection of right ingredients with right proportions, that forms the ’Life’. Is this what Aristotle was referring to when he used the word ’Harmony’ for all these parts to form the whole? Maybe. But it makes sense to me. It is like getting the right chemical formula that produces the desired result.

So what actually happens when this secret formula starts working, that translates into life?

What happens when you turn the ignition on in a car. It comes to LIFE! That means, by providing the vehicle with electric current and thereby causing a chain of reactions, the vehicle starts to move. In the same token, human body during its formation stages, reaches a certain point (the right combination) where it is able to generate electric pulses that starts activating its organs such as heart, which then initiates a separate chain of reaction to produce development of organs such as the nervous system, etc. I may have gotten the sequence wrong, but what I mean to say that a logical process of development follows to a critical point and then onwards to form the final product, a life form. That critical point, or critical mass, is the point where Life or Soul is ’activated’ into that body. Be it a human, or an animal, all follow the same rule. It is the genetic knowledge that determines the rest of the composition of the life form. If there is anything wrong with either the formula or the genetic knowledge, the result is in the form of a dead birth, or a disformed birth. (Genes encode the information necessary for synthesizing the amino-acid sequences in proteins, which in turn play a large role in determining the final phenotype, or physical appearance. Source www.wikipedia.org).

So, what is a Soul then? Is it not just the mere ’current’ that runs in our body? What happens when this current gets shut off? Our heart stops, that starves our brain of oxygen, and eventually causes death. How do we jump start the body when it fails? by giving it ’Electric Shock’. If that ’Critical Mass’ remains in place, the body continues to function since it is able to generate just the right amount of electrical activity through out the body....

If this is the definition of our Soul, then what happens to all that has been said and is being said about a Soul. Is it just a concept that is put forth by different people in different ways, even to this day? This also explains the different paths that Socrates and Aristotle took with their own logics and perceptions....

If life is simply a result of a critical mass composition, then everything else in life is determined by the choices our cognitive mind makes....I’ll leave the rest for the reader to ponder on.