Immortality (40 page)

The seekers of medical immortality are well represented by the gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, whose book
Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
(St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008, written with his assistant Michael Rae) details his Engineering Approach to defeating aging. Another enthusiastic and readable immortalist is Ray Kurzweil, as reflected in his many books and articles on the subject, most notably
Fantastic Voyage: Living Long Enough to Live Forever
(with Terry Grossman, Rodale, 2004),
Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever
(also with Terry Grossman, Rodale, 2009) and
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
(Viking, 2005).

The Immortality Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting radical life extension, has also published a collection of articles on the science and philosophy of the immortalists (including by Kurzweil and de Grey) called
The Scientific Conquest of Death: Essays on Infinite Lifespans
(Libros en Red, 2004). At the time this book went to print, this collection was also available to download for free from imminst.org/book.

A philosophical defense of radical life extension is offered by the work of John Harris, for example in
Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making People Better
(Princeton University Press, 2007), whereas those altogether opposed to such attempts are well represented by Francis Fukuyama in his book
Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
(Profile Books, 2002).

Bryan Appleyard’s aforementioned
How to Live Forever or Die Trying
and Jonathan Weiner’s
Long for This World: The Strange Science of
Immortality
(HarperCollins, 2010) both give good (somewhat skeptical) layman’s accounts of the modern life-extension movement’s aims and leading personalities.

The demographer who calculated that curing cancer would add only three years to our lives was S. Jay Olshansky, and the pessimistic view of the possibility of radical life extension can be found in his book (with Bruce A. Carnes)
The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging
(W. W. Norton, 2001). An excellent overview of the science of life, death, aging and immortality can be found in
The Living End
by the gerontologist Guy Brown (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

The figures cited for the average life expectancy of medical immortals calculated by Professor Steven N. Austad are taken from personal correspondence with the author. His book
Why We Age
(John Wiley & Sons, 1997) is a very good introduction to the aging process—including why it is unlikely we will ever be able to fully defeat it.

The former British astronomer royal and president of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, has written a terrifying account of the many ways in which our species might be doomed:
Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century?
(Heinemann, 2003).

There are many thousands of studies on the life and works of St. Paul available. Two nice little introductions are Edward Stourton’s
In the Footsteps of St. Paul
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2004) and E. P. Sanders’s
Paul: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford University Press, 2001). Two extremely useful scholarly introductions are
The Writings of St. Paul: A Norton Critical Edition
, edited by Wayne A. Meeks and John T. Fitzgerald (W. W. Norton, 2007) and
The Cambridge Companion to St. Paul
, edited by James D. G. Dunn (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Paul’s Judaism and its implications for his theology
are explored in
Paul and Rabbinic Judaism
by W. D. Davies (SPCK Publishing, 1948) and more recently by Alan F. Segal in
Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee
(Yale University Press, 1990), and his influence on Christianity is debated accessibly in A. N. Wilson’s
Paul: The Mind of the Apostle
(W. W. Norton, 1998) and
What Saint Paul Really Said
by Tom Wright (Lion Hudson, 2003).

The Martin Luther quote is taken from Corliss Lamont’s aforementioned
The Illusion of Immortality
. The Karen Armstrong quote is from
A Short History of Myth
(Cannongate, 2005). A good introduction to the nature of ritual, including the aspects I mention, is
Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions
by Catherine Bell (Oxford University Press, 1997). A magnificent account of the development of afterlife beliefs in the ancient world can be found in Alan F. Segal’s
Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion
(Doubleday Religion, 2004). An overview of the state of scholarly thinking on the “dying and rising gods” can be found in
The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East
by Tryggve N. D. Mettinger (Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001).

The Sigmund Freud quote is from
The Future of an Illusion
(Penguin, 1927). Sir James Frazer’s
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
was first published in 1890 and is available in various editions.

Oscar Cullmann’s comparison of the deaths of Socrates and Jesus and subsequent insightful discussion can be found in his
Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?
(The Epworth Press, 1958). The
Catholic Encyclopedia
(original version from 1914) is available in various editions and online. Nerina Rustomji’s analysis of the Islamic afterlife is published as
The Garden and the Fire: Heaven and Hell in Islamic Culture
(Columbia University Press, 2009). The quote from Jon Levenson is from
Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life
(Yale University Press, 2006).

Diarmaid MacCulloch’s discussion of the resurrection is taken
from his monumental work
A History of Christianity
(Allen Lane, 2009). The report of a Roman persecution of Christians in Gaul is taken from a letter from the church of Lyons to the church of Vienne, as described by the Dutch historian of religion Jan N. Bremmer in his thought-provoking collection of essays
The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife
(Routledge, 2002). A very interesting account of the idea of resurrection in the early Church is Caroline W. Bynum’s
The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: 200–1336
(Columbia University Press, 1995). The estimate that we replace 98 percent of our atoms every year is from
What Is Life?
by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan (University of California Press, 1995).

The area of philosophy that asks what kind of thing humans or persons are (e.g., a body or a soul) and whether they can survive bodily death is “personal identity theory.” A good introduction to the technical discussion is Harold Noonan’s
Personal Identity
(Routledge, 2003), whereas an excellent, less technical exploration is Julian Baggini’s
The Ego Trick: What Does It Mean to Be You?
(Granta, 2011). Essays particularly concerned with personal identity and the afterlife can be found in Paul Edwards’s aforementioned collection
Immortality
. This latter book contains the important paper “The Possibility of Resurrection” by Peter van Inwagen (first published in the
International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion
9 [1978] 114–21), from which I take the problem of resurrecting both the child and adult versions of the same person.

Mary Shelley first published
Frankenstein
in 1818, then a revised version in 1831. Most modern editions use the 1831 text (which is the one I quote), but good ones, such as that from Penguin Classics, also list the revisions so that it is possible to see how the text evolved. Mary Shelley’s account of the story’s inspiration is in her introduction to the revised edition. The other Mary Shelley stories referred
to—“Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman” and “The Mortal Immortal”—can both be found for free online. Mary Shelley’s diary entry on losing her first baby is taken from
Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters
by Anne K. Mellor (Routledge, 1988), a seminal analysis that skillfully summarizes the feminist critique of scientific discourse found in
Frankenstein
.

The account of Giovanni Aldini’s galvanic experiments can be found in Richard Holmes’s
The Age of Wonder
(Harper, 2008), a fascinating introduction to the science and personalities of the Romantic period. It is also retold in the aforementioned
Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer
by David Boyd Haycock. The quotes from Descartes and Bacon are both taken from Gerald Gruman’s aforementioned
A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life
.

The Zygmunt Bauman quote is of course from
Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies
, mentioned above, which has a good account of the drive to mastery as the essence of modernity. The quote from Braden R. Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz is from their book
The Techno-Human Condition
(MIT Press, 2011). The thesis that the Enlightenment offered a secular version of Christian apocalyptic thinking was first advanced by Carl L. Becker in
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers
(Yale University Press, 1933). It was subsequently developed by the historian David F. Noble in his book
The Religion of Technology
(Penguin, 1997) and brilliantly explored by John Gray in his books
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia
(Penguin, 2007) and
The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death
(Allen Lane, 2011).

The story of New England folktales is taken from Stuart Alve Olson’s
The Jade Emperor’s Mind Seal Classic
(Inner Traditions, 2003). Those wishing to find out more about cryonics or mind-uploading should best search the Internet. The cryonics institution Alcor Life Extension Foundation at press time has a useful online library of information on the science and philosophy of cryopreserving human beings (
www.alcor.org
). The book considered to have launched the
cryonics movement is Robert C. W. Ettinger’s
The Prospect of Immortality
(Doubleday, 1964). One leading exponent of mind-uploading is the roboticist and futurist Hans Moravec, for example, in
Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence
(Harvard University Press, 1988). Ian Pearson’s prediction of mind-uploading by 2050 is taken from an interview with the
Observer
newspaper, May 22, 2005. Frank Tipler expounds his extraordinary thesis in
The Physics of Christianity
(Doubleday, 2007) and
The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead
(Doubleday, 1994).

The arguments
against
the view that we can survive through reproduction of our psychology (and therefore could survive such things as mind-uploading) have a long history. In recent times, they were stated clearly by Bernard Williams in his book
Problems of the Self
(Cambridge University Press, 1973). But a hugely influential
defense
of this view was recently given by Derek Parfit in
Reasons and Persons
(Oxford University Press, 1984), after which the view flourished. But it is now giving ground once again, largely in the face of arguments from the philosophical position known as “animalism,” the seminal text of which is Eric Olson’s
The Human Animal
(Oxford University Press, 1997). The philosopher who suggested that God snatches our bodies in order to keep them safely for the resurrection is Peter van Inwagen, in his paper “The Possibility of Resurrection,” referred to above.

All the quotes in the first section are from Dante’s
Vita Nuova
(“New Life,” first published in 1295 and available in many editions and online), his early collection of poetry and prose mostly dedicated to his infatuation with Beatrice. Dante’s
Divine Comedy
is also available in many editions; I have mostly relied on the 1993 Oxford World’s Classics edition with translation by Charles H. Sisson.

Augustine’s views on the role of the female body in heaven are taken from Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang’s excellent
Heaven: A History
(Yale Nota Bene, 1988). Good accounts of how Christianity adopted Plato’s view of the soul can be found in Alan Segal’s aforementioned
Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion
and in Raymond Martin and John Barresi’s
The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self
(Columbia University Press, 2006). From the latter comes the quote about the idea of the soul shaping the mind-set of Western civilization.

The Ernest Becker quote on Christianity is again from
The Denial of Death
. Louis Dumont’s account of Christianity’s role in the development of individualism is from his essay “The Christian Beginnings of Modern Individualism,” which can be found in the book
The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History
(Cambridge University Press, 1985), edited by Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins and Steven Lukes.

I have borrowed Boccaccio’s tale of Dante’s charred beard from Lisa Miller’s
Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife
(Harper, 2010). The quotation from the judgment against Galileo is taken from
The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History
, edited and translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro (University of California Press, 1989). The C. S. Lewis image of us moderns staring out into the void is from his
The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
(Cambridge University Press, 1964). The views of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) on heaven can be found in his book
Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life
(The Catholic University of America Press, 2007).