ABC Radio Breakfast
How much does the human soul weigh? It may sound like a crazy question, the stuff of Hollywood, a theme was explored in the Sean Penn blockbuster 21-grams, but the inspiration behind the movie came from serious experiments carried out early last century.
That may sound crazy nowadays, but it’s not easy, when you’re working at the cutting edge of science, to know which experiments will revolutionise society – and which will make you a laughing stock a few decades down the line.
Dr Len Fisher is an Australian physicist based at the University of Bristol in the UK, where he’s a visiting research fellow. He’s just published Weighing the Soul: The Evolution of Scientific Beliefs – a look at some of history’s more adventurous scientific efforts, and we speak to him this morning.