About Death
Roughly 150,000 people die each day across the globe.
Death is the irreversible termination of the biological functions that define a living organism.
One of the challenges in defining death is in distinguishing it from life. Death would seem to refer to either the moment at which life ends, or when the state that follows life begins.
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However, determining when death has occurred requires drawing precise conceptual boundaries between life and death. This is problematic however because there is little consensus over how to define life. Some have suggested defining life in terms of consciousness.
When consciousness ceases, a living organism can be said to have died. One of the notable flaws in this approach is that there are many organisms which are alive but probably not conscious (for example, single-celled organisms). Another problem with this approach is in defining consciousness, which remains a mystery to modern scientists, psychologists and philosophers. This general problem of defining death applies to the particular challenge of defining death in the context of medicine.
Historically, attempts to define the exact moment of a human's death have been problematic. Death was once defined as the cessation of heartbeat (cardiac arrest) and of breathing, but the development of CPR and prompt defibrillation have rendered that definition inadequate because breathing and heartbeat can sometimes be restarted. Events which were causally linked to death in the past no longer kill in all circumstances; without a functioning heart or lungs, life can sometimes be sustained with a combination of life support devices, organ transplants and artificial pacemakers.
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Today, where a definition of the moment of death is required, doctors and coroners usually turn to 'brain death' or 'biological death' to define a person as being clinically dead; people are considered dead when the electrical activity in their brain ceases. It is presumed that an end of electrical activity indicates the end of consciousness. However, suspension of consciousness must be permanent, and not transient, as occurs during certain sleep stages, and especially a coma. In the case of sleep, EEGs can easily tell the difference.
Many have challenged the idea that brain death is equivalent to the cessation of consciousness. Critics point out that much of human consciousness is embodied in numerous body parts and that the end of electrical impulses in the brain does not necessarily indicate that this embodied consciousness has also ceased. Given this possibility, brain death does not necessitate the end of consciousness, and thus brain dead people may still be alive.
Within the scientific community, death is frequently associated with a belief in materialism and the complete ending of mind or consciousness. Yet despite the common notion that this is a scientific viewpoint, consciousness itself has yet to be fully understood in science and psychology, and any view about the existence or non-existence of consciousness after death remains a speculative belief.
The true nature of the condition that results has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical enquiry.
Many religions maintain a belief in either some kind of afterlife or rebirth. The effect of physical death on any possible mind or soul remains for many an open question.
Misdiagnosed death
There are many anecdotal references to people being declared dead by physicians and then 'coming back to life', sometimes days later in their own coffin, or when embalming procedures are just about to begin. Owing to significant scientific advancements in the Victorian era, some people in Britain became obsessively worried about living after being declared dead.
In cases of electric shock, CPR for an hour or longer can allow stunned nerves to recover, allowing an apparently dead person to survive. People found unconscious under icy water may survive if their faces are kept continuously cold until they arrive at an emergency room.
As medical technologies advance, ideas about when death occurs may have to be re-evaluated in light of the ability to restore a person to vitality after longer periods of apparent death.
Death in culture
Death is the center of many traditions and organizations, and is a feature of every culture around the world. Much of this revolves around the care of the dead, as well as the afterlife and the disposal of bodies upon the onset of death.
The disposal of human corpses does, in general, begin with the last offices before significant time has passed, and ritualistic ceremonies often occur, most commonly interment or cremation. This is not a unified practice, however, as in Tibet for instance the body is given a sky burial and left on a mountain top. Mummification or embalming is also prevalent in some cultures, to retard the rate of decay.
Tibetan Buddhists have a daily mantra.
"Death is real, it comes without warning, this body will be a corpse."
Here in the secular west, we consider regular contemplation of death to be morbid. Kathy Graham reminds us of our mortality is this wonderful 'Let's talk About Death' Article.
Another argument which the Vedantists advance in support of the theory of Reincarnation is that "Nothing is destroyed in the universe."
Destruction in the sense of the annihilation of a thing is unknown to the Vedantic philosophers, just as it is unknown to the modern scientists.
The say "non-existence can never become existence and existence can never become non-existence." Or, in other words, that which did not exist can never exist, and conversely that which exists in any form can never become non-existent. This is the law of nature.