JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I found an article with a captivating title and didn't know where it would take me, except that at the end we got to the point of life-and-death being somewhat in league with the conservation of energy. Anyway, the title is as you see it in the title of this quick post, “On the Annihilation of the Mind”, written by the considerable John Trowbridge, who was a professor of physics at Harvard, an E&M guy, and the major force in establishing the Jefferson Lab at Harvard. I recall that he was very prolific in addition to his teaching duties, and right about this time published several articles on the Bell telephone, which made it first appearances less than a year before this article, which published in the Popular Science Monthly in April 1877.
The last three sentence sum the article up, though I'm not exactly sure of how the author arrived at his conclusions—it bears repeating in spite of the result, if for no other reason than to share the pretty remarkable structure of the close of the article.
And so:
"The doctrine of the existence of the spirit after physical death seems to me not to be foreign to the scientific ideas of the conservation of force, which have now obtained such complete supremacy in the science of physics; or to the doctrines of Darwin, which are accepted by so large a body of eminent naturalists. Without the sun there would be an annihilation of force. When energy is dissipated, we find the sun exalting it again by processes which we cannot completely follow. The idea of a great source of life and mind, the prototype of our physical sun, which sets in motion a vast scheme for the survival of the fittest, and the exaltation of energy in vast cycles, is not inconsistent with the doctrine of the New Testament, and seems to be required in a philosophical theory which shall endeavor to account for the differences in that great spiritual world which are continually suggested to the human mind by the various types of mental growth."
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