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21 grams
How Much Does a Soul Weigh?
Let’s forget for a moment that the evidence for a soul’s existence is as substantial as that for Russell’s teapot orbiting the sun in the asteroid belt. If a soul can “leave” the body, then presumably, while a person is alive, it is contained within their body. This raises a reasonable question: how much does it weigh?
Popular culture, from Iñárritu’s film to Rosalía’s recent album, knows the answer well: 21 grams. This figure isn’t pulled out of thin air but originates from a “scientific” experiment.
Back in 1907, an American physician named Duncan MacDougall announced an experiment involving weighing dying patients. Precision scales placed under the beds of the dying reportedly showed, in at least one case, a loss of 21 grams shortly after death. MacDougall took this figure to be the mass of the human soul.
Naturally, such an experiment requires a control group. Driven by Christian superstitions about soulless animals, he sacrificed 15 healthy dogs on the altar of science and found no loss of mass in them.
Of course, subsequent attempts to replicate the experiment ended in complete failure, and MacDougall’s own methodology cannot withstand any scrutiny. But perhaps modern science has something to say on the topic?
