Book Review: What Is Death?

Tyler Volk. What Is Death? A Scientist Looks at the Cycle of Life. John N. Wiley and Sons, 2002.

It is common for theists to wonder how anyone can bear to think of death without believing in any type of existance after. Biologist Tyler Volk (of New York University) offers offers an array of approaches to answering this question in this elegantly-written and accessible book.

Clearly, Volk's cultural background is one that welcomes New Age spirituality. It is to his credit that, while using the Buddha, Jesus, and shamans as sources of possible ideas about death, he avoids any trace of mysticism. However, his is a poetic, ecstatic type of atheism.

After the introduction, the book starts out with a few chapters arguing that there is no "spirit" separate from the material world (and thus no "soul" that can survive death), a viewpoint for which he introduces the useful word "monism". This is the weakest part of the book. Volk gives a very sketchy account of the neurobiology of self and consciousness (admittedly something just about impossible to do justice to in a few pages) and attempts to respectfully account for the beliefs of his dualist friends. The arguments are probably nothing that readers of this review haven't heard before. More interesting is the chapter that follows, introducing his very personal take on how to overcome, and even benefit from, the fear of death in a monist worldview; I'll return to it later.

The other sections deal with, first, the social and cultural aspects, and second, the biological aspects of death.

There's a discussion of how cultural practices (irrespective of beliefs about an afterlife) both overcome the fear of death and use death to strengthen individuals and communities. Funeral rituals, by providing a structured outlet for the emotions aroused by death (such as the fear associated with any reminder of mortality), avoid the chaos that they might cause; also, they may help consolidate attachement to the deceased by communal remembering, which also strengthens social ties. Volk also draws connections between the rituals associated with this uncontrolled death, and the controlled death of sacrifice, as well as the killing that is necessary for carnivores such as H. sapiens to live. It's speculative but highly interesting.

Another discussion draws on the psychological theory of "terror management" as developed by Solomon, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, et al. Roughly speaking, what helps people ward (unconsciously) against the fear of death is to construct and defend a worldview they share with others -- the researchers have presented experimental evidence that people defend the values of their group more strongly when subtly reminded of death. If this theory is taken to the limit, the fear of death becomes the primary building force behind all of culture.

These chapters bring to the fore one of the repeated themes of the book -- death as a creator. (Volk sums it up with a phrase that becomes his motto: "Death, thus life".) He writes:

As biological death is turned round into new life forms via carbon flows in the biosphere, so human death is turned into social and psychological structures via loops between individuals and their cultures.

There is a good chapter introducing the idea of the "extended self", the person as a composite of everyone who we know or are influenced by. Through these connections, direct and indirect, people last long after their physical death - no-one is entirely lost. This cultural continuity may be consoling, but Volk doesn't address how the loss of entire cultures, species, or worlds could be borne.

The section on biology also repeatedly emphasizes the creative role of death. This is very non-technically written and would, I think, interest even people who know very little about biology (even basic knowledge of natural selection is not assumed, but rather introduced as it is used). A minor quibble is that in his wish to avoid jargon, Volk uses non-standard terminology; introducing just a few standard technical words would help those who wish to read more.

The perspective in this book is one most people probably haven't considered. Volk demonstrates that, although eventual demise from disease, accident, or predation is inevitable, aging is not -- organisms could be theoretically immortal, so why do most senesce? And why do single-celled organisms and the cells of multicellular creatures sometimes destroy themselves in an obviously planned way?

The answer, of course, requires considering natural selection. Given that no individual can survive life's accidents forever, the organisms now in existence are the descendents of ones which left numerous progeny, not ones which lived very long but ultimately didn't reproduce. If the death of an individual carrying a certain combination of genes contributes to the origin of more individuals with a complete or partial copy of that gene combination, those genes are likely to be among the ones that are still around today. In other words, death may be positively selected for.

And indeed, Volk (drawing on the research of Caleb Finch, Ichizo Kobayashi, Kim Lewis, and many others) shows that it is, in a number of different circumstances. For instance, some cells of plants and fungi build sturdy walls then dissolve their living contents to form hollow supporting structures for the whole organism; during embryonic development, shaping is partially accomplished by excess cells pruning themselves away (suicide in response to signals from neighbors); and single-celled organisms may keep track of "communities" of their clone-siblings whose interests they promote by choosing death -- all of this is relations among cells with genetic common interests, and it's a process that probably goes back to the very beginning of life. Furthermore, many aspects of aging can be understood by viewing it as organisms spending resources on producing offspring rather than on keeping themselves in good repair.

Volk spends no time at all discussing mechanisms for avoiding death; instead, his theme is death as an option and a creative force in evolution.

Volk writes of his personal feelings and responses to mortality throughout the book. This might, I suspect, be the most significant part for a theist trying to understand another mindset, especially as he is modest in saying that his is only one of many ways to think on the subject. These reflections inspire some of his most lyrical writing. He recommends keeping the idea of death present in consciousness frequently, arguing that it is important for living vividly in the present. After a near-fatal accident, he found that the best way for him to transcend fear of ending was an overwhelming feeling of gratitude -- not to any personified giver, but simply in the feeling that just existing is a kind of gift; one's own death is a giving back, but daily recognition of that fact enhances life. He writes:

I want to be clear that gratitude is not simply a reaction to fear, like putting up a shield against an oncoming spear. Gratitude is more like grabbing the spear as it flies toward one's body, and then using the momentum to turn around and around with the spear in hand and dance onself into ecstasy.

For an idea of how a nontheist, monist worldview could have an optimistic view of mortality, and for varied possible reflections on death, this book would definitely be a good reading suggestion.