What Is Death?
A Scientist Looks at the Cycle of Life
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION:
DEATH,
THUS LIFE
* * *
We age, and most of us come to accept the persistent specter of
death as an inevitable part of being alive. It's the price we disburse
at the end, a price for the gift of life.
We don't normally revel in this state of affairs, of course. I, for one,
wouldn't mind cheating the game. But it's futile to think about playing
without paying. Though the advances of medical science often do lengthen
our term of ephemerality, they cannot promise us eternity. In short, we are
faced with a simple fact: "life, thus death."
This simple phrase-life, thus death-summarizes my core theme:
the bond between life and death. But I am primarily intrigued with how
this bond can be expressed (and perhaps far better expressed) by reversing
the phrase. Let's flip the logic around and say "death, thus life."
How can death precede life? Are there cases in which death is paid
for not at the end but at the beginning of life?
Near the end of the movie Saving Private Ryan, the dying captain,
played by Tom Hanks, looks up into the face of Ryan, played by Matt
Damon, and gasps one final ... read full excerpt from What Is Death?: A Scientist Looks at the Cycle of Life ebook
