How the Body is Conceptualized and How it Relates to our Views on Death

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The concepts we as human beings have developed regarding perspectives of one’s own body have never remained static and universal. Our species is enduring the constant struggle for striving to know the processes of the human body and how they relate to our views of the meaning of life and subsequent death. The contemporary era of modern biomedicine is an amalgamation of the concepts of Cartesian duality proposed by René Descartes (1596 - 1650). According to Sheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) this separation of the palpable, organic body from the intangible, intellectual mind allowed for the pursuit of biomedical study and materialist doctrine adopted by Western medical practice. These epistemological concepts of the human body then perpetuate society’s interest, no longer in the separation of mind and body, but in preserving the mind beyond the limits of the physical body, and treating the body merely as a vessel that can be likened to a machine (Helman 2007). As this body perception model progresses, and we as persons view our body as being composed of ‘parts’ that can be replaced, scientists continue to develop new ways of transplanting organic tissues and cells. One such theory of the variety of techniques include cryopreservation, a branch of cryobiology that focuses on the utilization of extremely low temperatures to preserve whole organic tissues or cells (Kaiser, 2002). In discussions of the future of our epistemological views of definitions of self and body as well as progression of technological biomedicine, one can only speculate, basing their propositions on a lower branch of cryobiology, cryonics. Gordon (1975) describes cryonics as the study involved in the application of cryopreservation techniques to preserve the neural t...

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Helman, Cecil G. (2007) The Body: Cultural Definitions of Anatomy and Physiology. Culture, Health and Illness. Hodder Arnold. 19-51.

Hughes, James J. (2001). The Future of Death: Cryonics and the Telos of Liberal Individualism. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 6. 1-30.

Kaiser, Jocelyn (2002). New Prospect for Putting Organs on Ice. Science, 295(5557). 1015.

Lehr, Herndon B. (1971). The Preservation of Tissues and Organs. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 115(4). 274-275.

Scheper-Hughes, & N. Lock, M.M. (1987). The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future work in Medical Anthropology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1(1). 296-315.

Scotter, A.J. et al. (2006). The Basis for Hyperactivity of Antifreeze Proteins. Cryobiology, 53. 229-239.

Silberner, J. (1986). Putting Human Tissue under Glass. Science News, 129(21). 326.

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