Every atom in our bodies came from somewhere else.

[tinrobot]

...and even during our lifetimes, we will completely recycle the atoms in our bodies many times over.

Makes you wonder which part of you is entirely "you" and not part of a larger whole.


(reposted on suggestion from Nihil)

[tridim]

1. And atoms are 99% empty space

Or at least they are in 4 dimensions.

[cosmik debris]

2. Not me. FSM made these atoms especially for me.

:sarcasm:

[Beetwasher]

26. Mine Are Really Little Meatballs

n/t

[cosmik debris]

27. We are all Little Meatballs in the eyes of FSM! n/t

[Warpy]

3. Well, of course, all our heavy atoms came from ancient exploded stars

and that means the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones, just two of them.

It's why I say "I'm recycled" when unpleasant people demand to know if I'm saved, even though I don't actually buy the separate soul going through eternal rebirth.

We're all made of 100% recycled materials.

[nxylas]

5. Trans-uranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life

A million nerd points to anyone who gets that reference.

[soothsayer]

8. cheated and googled it so no points for me but man it sounds cool

i'll try to find it

[moggie]

10. Bloody hell

That's a sentence I haven't read for years! Thanks so much for reminding me of lousy 1970s TV!

[nxylas]

11. Lousy 1970s TV > Lousy 2000s TV

Give me Sapphire & Steel over some crappy reality show any day.

[moggie]

13. I've never watched any reality show

I average 1.5 to 2 hours of TV a week, and I've never watched reality TV. Perhaps that means I'm not qualified to criticise it, but the idea just never appealed to me.

[tinrobot]

4. Furthermore....

The atoms that currently comprise our bodies have been in existence for a very long time, usually billions of years. Those atoms have joined with other atoms in countless combinations over many eons to make everything from stars to dirt to oceans to plants and animals, and even creatures such as us.

And, yet, even though I know all of these atoms are simply borrowed, my ego likes to call this current collection of atoms "Me."

So, that begs the question - exactly where in these borrowed atoms do "I" reside?

[rrneck]

9. In your own

self awareness.

If you are no longer self aware, you no longer exist.

[Odin2005]

22. Simple, there is no "I", it is a cognitive illusion.

[Nihil]

30. (Thanks for the repost!)

I've enjoyed reading (most of) the responses on this.

:toast:

[saltpoint]

6. We just can't trust ourselves at all. We don't know where we've been.

[dweller]

7. and when you are done with them

they just head back there.

kinda like a homecoming,
dp

[applegrove]

12. I probably have a atom from William Shakespeare in me right now.

[moggie]

14. You are a homeopathic William Shakespeare

[skepticscott]

17. It's pretty much a certainty

that you have quite a few of them. Feeling creative?

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. It was a calculation we did in science in school

Every breath you take will probably contain a molecule from the dying breath of <insert famous person here> ('probably' was defined loosely, but the average would be 'several molecules'), assuming adequate mixing of the atmosphere. And oxygen, hydrogen and carbon atoms cycle through the body constantly in respiration.

[ZombieHorde]

15. "Makes you wonder which part of you is entirely "you" and not part of a larger whole. "

No, its just synergy.

[aka-chmeee]

16. Titus Lucretius Carus c.98BC to 55BC

Already knew this. His writings are surprising and while he didn't get everything right, he got enough right to change my view of the ancients which had been formed mainly by the bible.

[Odin2005]

21. I adore the Epicureans. They were the first organized school of secular humanists.

Platonists and Christians gave them a bad name, they were decidedly NOT vapid hedonists. In fact their views were very much like those of Buddhism, they beleived that attachment to stuff leads to suffering, one should lead a virtuous life based on moderation and the Golden Rule.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. They had a quick discussion on this on the radio a few days ago

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld.shtml

Their guesses were that the parts of the body involving least replacement (biological replacement, anyway) included the eggs in a woman's ovaries (they all develop, as far as forming their own nucleus goes anyway, before the woman is born), and the calcium phosphate in your bones. I'd think the DNA in the eggs is unlikely to get recycled - it'd have to involve a specific process controlled by enzymes for "take out a C/H/O/N/P atom, and replace it with another one", which sounds pretty pointless. I'd think osteoporosis shows that (normally) calcium and phosphate ions gradually get replaced in the body, though it's possible it takes years.

[Odin2005]

20. "By convention taste, by convention color, in reality only atoms and the void" - Democritus

"Cedit item retro, de terra quod fuit ante, in terras."
"What once sprung from the earth sinks back into the earth."

--Lucretius


Living things are not things, we are processes. We are intimately a part of nature, not separate from it. The self is an illusion, though a very convincing one. That we are self-contained entities with "incorporeal souls" separate from nature couldn't be more wrong.

[Nihil]

29. So "self" is an illusion, a side-effect of the process of living?

> Living things are not things, we are processes.

I can see that explanation as an analogue of wave/particle duality,
i.e., a "living thing" can be viewed as a "thing" under certain
circumstances or as a "process" under other circumstances but, even
though the two categories are mutually exclusive, they both apply
to the subject.

Alternatively, it's like "thing" if static or "process" if dynamic
and the reality is that it is always dynamic (hence the static view
is, and can only ever be, an illusion).


> We are intimately a part of nature, not separate from it.

If only humans in general could see this ... <sigh>


> The self is an illusion, though a very convincing one.

I suspect that, as above, the illusion of self arises from
the learned habits of reviewing snapshots of effectively
static situations rather than perceiving the dynamic whole.
As a result, we see the static image as "real" instead of
just a frame in the sequence, just one Planck time in a
continuum of change.
:shrug:

[Odin2005]

31. Exactly.

It's also a result of a cognitive crutch called Essentialism, explaining things in terms of "inherent essential natures" instead of physical laws (*COUGH* Aristotle *COUGH*). the notion of a "self", especially a "self" in the form of a "soul" is an example of essentialism.

[struggle4progress]

23. "... We are stardust: billion year old carbon. We are golden, caught in the devils bargain

and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden ..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrVvXJut9Fo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuISB2ksnMM

[Manifestor_of_Light]

24. Cosmos, Episode 8. Circa 1980. Carl Sagan.

Matter is much older than life. Billions of years before the sun and earth even formed, atoms were being synthesised in the insides of hot stars, and then returned to space, when the stars blew themselves up.

Newly formed planets were made of this stellar debris. The earth and every living thing are made of star stuff.

But how slowly in our human perspective life evolved from the molecules of early oceans to the first bacteria.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE9dEAx5Sgw

[Silent3]

25. Even from a materialist perspective, "you" aren't necessarily your particular atoms.

You don't need to believe in a mystical soul to think about the notion of "self" as being separate from a particular set of atoms. The most important part of "self" that we tie to our self of identity is our memories. If your brain could be removed from your body and transplanted into a different body, it makes more sense to think of that procedure as "you" getting a new body than treating the body your brain was implanted into as a unique individual who happened to get a new mind.

Going further, could your mind be imprinted on a new brain? If all of the important details of your current brain could be copied into a new brain in sufficient detail, why not? Even if the copy wasn't perfect, would the copy be less "you" than a brain damaged you that remembers less than the copy?

You could also think of personal identity like a business identity. Think about a company that has been around for a hundred years or more. All of the original employees are going to be gone, the business may have moved from one building to another several times, maybe a few physical mementos survive, or old paper files, but if the mementos were lost in a fire and the paper documents thrown away after being transferred to digital storage, the company identity would survive nearly unaffected. The products and service offered by the business may have changed radically over time, but as long as there is a flowing continuity of events where all of these changes don't happen all at once the business identity continues.

Which brings to mind this question: Are you still you? Maybe the 50 y/o woman who currently manages northwest regional sales isn't any more the same person as seven year-old girl with the same DNA she vaguely remember playing with dolls 43 years ago than the company she works for, which sold tractor parts a hundred years ago and now sells environmental control system, is the same company.

[trotsky]

28. Agreed.

Where the problems come in, is when somebody decides this has some kind of mystical, metaphysical meaning about "souls" being "interconnected".