
Cover of a 100-page 2005 manuscript *Cessation Thermodynamics* by American chemical engineer Libb Thims, of which 100-copies were printed and distributed around Chicago, on the subject of death in the context of the first law of thermodynamics. [10]

Cover of a 100-page 2005 manuscript Cessation Thermodynamics by American chemical engineer Libb Thims, of which 100-copies were printed and distributed around Chicago, on the subject of death in the context of the first law of thermodynamics. [10]

In human thermodynamics, cessation thermodynamics is the study of death, or termination of the physical movement or neurological activity of a person (human molecule), in relation to a potential or hypothetical conserved (moral or amoral) "essence of a person", in the post-cessation bonded structure of the universe or society, as discerned by the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) which states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. [1]

The term "cessation thermodynamics" was coined in 2005 by American chemical engineer Libb Thims as the study of death from the perspective of thermodynamics. In short, cessation thermodynamics studies how, if at all, the energy content of the being of a person, moral or amoral, as described via the fundamental forces, connects to the movement of the universe.

The topic of death, and particularly "what happens to a person when they die", although this philosophical puzzle is the most desired query to be answered in modern times, generally tends to remain a relatively mute one in science. [2] No satisfactory scientific solutions, to date, have been published. [3] The law of conservation of energy or generalized first law of thermodynamics, however, is the only law seated to provide a solution.

History
Historically, or colloquially, as discerned through the world's religions, which can be considered as the sciences of the past, a general theory pervades throughout that following the death of the physical body a type of soul, spirit, essence, p’o, hun, yin, yang, pitri, atman, nafs, ruh, kami, jiva, pheuma, physche, élan vital, fravashi, totism, psychopomp, dooh, dusha, rauch, n’shama, ka, or ba, etc., remains, transforms, or migrates into a post-cessation state of existence. [8] For most of history, these terms were explained by the various religious texts and the stories they derived from.

In the 1850s, however, with the development of the science of energetics (thermodynamics), the view of what these terms were in composition began to change.

The earliest views on this type of logic from the field of psychodynamic, or energy psychology, in combination with late 19th century animism or vitalist views, in which life forms were argued to have a special type of "vital energy" distinct from that of the physical energies. In the late 19th century, for instance, German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, with his "System der Philosophie", sought to understand the human mind by identifying the constituent parts of human consciousness, in the same way that a chemical compound is broken into various elements and who viewed psychology as a science, much like physics or chemistry, in which consciousness is a collection of identifiable parts.

The first to postulate ideas along these lines was German physician and physicist Hermann Helmholtz who in 1892, in his discussions on the thermodynamics of Goethe's Faust, reasoned that the ebb and flow of life, and its relation to death, has an explanation in the total constancy of energy or active force, for both animate and inanimate life. [2]

The first to discuss the nature of human death in relation to energy, in particular reference to the law of conservation of energy, was German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, one of the founders of the school of energetics, who, in the 1906 Ingersoll lecture Individuality and Immortality, asked the question: [9]

“What has energetics to say about immortality.”

In 1910, using Wundt as source, in reference to the thermodynamic aspects of death, American social historian Henry Adams stated that: [4]

“The naturalist now readily admits that plants have souls—or will-power—but he appropriates the soul as an energy of thermodynamics.”

In 1919, on the topic of death and its connection to the conservation of energy, Engish physical chemist Frederick Soddy outlined a short synopsis on his views in his article subsection “Immortality or the Conservation of Personality” in his book Science and Life. [11] He states, “the real part of a man is not his bodily organism, which is continually wasting away and being as continually renewed, nor the physical energy at its command, which is derived entirely from the inanimate world, but is the personality resident in the body and in control of it.” On this perspective, he eludes to the hypothesis that this quantity is conserved after death; a kin to the conception of immortality of the soul; although, he notes, it is not a conservation phenomenon applicable to the inanimate world.

In the 1976 book The Reflexive Universe, American mathematician Arthur Young formulated ideas on the immortality of the soul as guaranteed by the first law of thermodynamics. [13]

In the 1950s, the first to outline the view that a "new science" of the study of the thermodynamics of death was needed was Iranian thermodynamicist Mehdi Bazargan who stated: [10]

“Thermodynamics might be able to say, though very vaguely, if there is going to be a resurrection and another world, how this may occur and what the other world may look like … In this way, we may be able to examine to what extent the signs of the other world, as provided by the prophets, are plausible. If these signs about the resurrection, paradise and hell form a reasonable and sensible related collection that new sciences, to some extent, affirm, then such beliefs are not baseless.”

In circa 1995, American physician Gerry Nahum, with a background in thermodynamics and information theory, supposedly, worked out a 25-page proposal, entitled "Proposal for Testing the Energetics of Consciousness and its Physical Foundation", to conduct a consciousness-weighing project to quantify the energy of consciousness or rather the “weight of the soul”, at the point of death, estimated to cost $100,000, using a negative entropy theory. [14]

In circa 2000, using the works of Pierre Teilhard and Belgian thermodynamicist Ilya Prigogine as a basis, French engineer and biophysical chemist Louis-Marie Vincent gave a crude theory of how the qualities of life, love (as a thermodynic potential) and death may function in respect to the time of death and in relation to near-death-experiences. [12]

In modern terms with the rise of particle physics, where, according to general scientific consensus, everything in the universe is either matter or energy or variations therein; quantities which can be further divided into entities called fermions, i.e. half integer spin particles, or bosons, i.e. integer spin particles, cessation thermodynamics considers how the life and death of a person connects, if at all, in respect to the movement of the universe.

Cessation conservation hypothesis

See main: Cessation conservation hypothesis

One of the first workable theories of a scientific explanation of death, as to the question of particularly "what happens to a person when they die?", was a tentative hypothesis of human "essense" (virtuousness) energy conservation, developed in rudimentary form by American chemical engineer Libb Thims in a chapter of the 2003 manuscript Human Thermodynamics (Volume Three), in which it was argued that following death the three components of a person that remain, aside from material possessions, are:

(a) the physical body (comprised of 26-elements that eventually are recycled in the biogeochemical cycle) (human molecule)
(b) the possible genetic material (in the form of offspring) (85% of people reproduce)
(c) a residual energy content (of the consequences of a person's actions throughout life) (human chemical bond energy) (energy signiture)

The latter of these, aspect (c), was hypothesized to be transported into the central nervous systems of family, friends, and acquaintances in either an organizing or deorganizing manner depending on the moral character, virtue, or righteousness of the person at the point of termination; acting through the medium of residual bond energy remain at the point of termination. [5] Thims wrote a 100-page manuscript titled Cessation Thermodynamics in 2005, of which one-hundred copies were distributed for feedback, and worte the first published chapter section entitled "Cessation Thermodynamics" in chapter sixteen of 2007 Human Chemistry (Volume Two). [10]

References
1. (a) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume Two), (preview), Ch 16: section "Cessation Thermodynamics", (693-699). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
(b) Klass, Dennis. Silverman, Phyllis, R. and Nickman, Steven L. (1996). Continuing Bonds - New Understandings of Grief. New York: Taylor and Francis.
(c) 30+ Variations of the First Law of Thermodynamics - Institute of Human Thermodynamics
2. Helmholtz, Hermann. (1892). “Goethe’s Presentiments of Coming Scientific Ideas”, Speech held in the General Assembly of the Goethe Society, Weimar in Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, (ch. 15, pg. 393-412 [411]), 1995, by Hermann von Helmholtz, David Cahan.
3. Thims, Libb. (2005) “What is Humankinds Present-Day Greatest Philosophical Conundrum?” (people polled in person in Chicago [N=81 votes]. institute of Human Thermodynamics
4. (a) Roach, Mary (2005). Spook – Science Tackles the Afterlife. W. W. Norton & Co.
(b) Crick, Francis (1995). The Astonishing Hypothesis – the Scientific Search for the Soul. Touchstone Books.
(c) Tipler, Franl, J. (1997). The Physics of Immortality – Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead. Anchor.
(d) Alper, Matthew (2001). The "God" Part of the Brain - a Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God. Rogue Press.
(e) Blum, Deborah. (2006). Ghost Hunters - William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. New York: Penguin Books.
(f) Fisher, Len. (2004). Weighing the Soul - the Evolution of Scientific Beliefs. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
(g) Zimmer, Carl. (2004). Soul Made Flesh - the Discovery of the Brain and How it Changed the World. New York: Free Press.
(h) Twining, Harry LaVerne. (1915). The Physical Theory of the Soul. (182 pages).
5. (a) Bazargan, Eshq va Parastesh ya Thermodynamic-e Ensan, 159.
(b) Taghavi, Sehed M. (2004). The Flourishing of Islamic Reformism in Iran: Political Islamic Groups in Iran (1941-61), (pg. 84). Routledge.
6. World’s religious divisions (by percent): Christian (32.8), Muslim (19.6), Hindu (12.8), Nonreligious (12.8), Chinese Religions (6.4), Buddhist (6.0), Ethnic Religionists (4.2), Atheist (2.5), New Religionists (1.7), Sikhs (0.4), Spiritists (0.2), Bahais (0.1), Confucians (0.1), Jains (0.07), Shintoists (0.05), Other Religionists (0.02), Zoroastrians (0.005), Mandeans (0.0006). [Source: Time Almanac 2002].
7. Adams, Henry, and Brooks, Adams. (1910). "A Letter to American Teachers of History", Kessinger Publishing (reprint).
8. Thims, Libb. (2003). Human Thermodynamics, VIII (manscript). Chicago: Institute of Human Thermodynamics.
9. (a) Ostwald, Wilhelm. (1906). Individuality and Immortality, (pg. 7). New York: Riverside Press.
(b) The Ingersoll Lectures on Human Immortality – Wikipedia.
10. (a) Thims, Libb. (2005). Cessation Thermodynamics (manuscript). Chicago: Institute of Human Thermodynamics.
(b) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume Two), (preview), Ch 16: section "Cessation Thermodynamics", (693-699). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
11. Soddy, Frederick. (1920). Science and Life, (section: Immortality or the Conservation of Personality, pgs. 151-54). New York: Dutton.
12. Valarino, Evelyn E. (2001). On the Other Side of Life: Exploring the Phenomenon of Near-death Experience (keyword: Entropy, pgs. 9, 170, 177, 211-12; ch. 6: “Dialogue with Louis-Marie Vincent, PhD”, pgs. 176-92; section: What about thermodynamic time?, pgs. 170-; section: Energy, pgs. 176-). Da Capo Press.
13. Young, Arthur. (1976). The Reflexive Universe: Evolution of Consciousness. Delacorte Press.
14. Roach, Mary. (2006). “What Happens After You Die?”, New Scientist, Nov. 18.

Further reading
● Platt, W.H. (1878). After Death—What? or Hell and Salvation considered in the light of Science and Philosophy (energy, 5+ pgs.). A.L. Bancroft & Co.
● Teilhard, Pierre (1955). “The Death-Barrier and Co-Reflection” (see parts: The Sense of Irreversibility and the Principle of the Conservation of Consciousness). Jan. 01, as found in Teilhard, Pierre. (1976). Activation of Energy, (pgs. 395-406). New York: Harvest Book.
● Drakos, Nikos. (1993). “Toward the Physics of Death”, David M. Keirsey, translator. University of Leeds.
● Prioreschi, Plinio. (1990). A History of Human Responses to Death: Mythologies, Rituals, and Ethics (thermodynamics, pgs. 6-19). E. Mellen Press.
● Chisholm, James S. (1999). Death, Hope, and Sex: Steps to an Evolutionary Ecology of Mind and Morality (second law of thermodynamics, pgs. 36, 38, 48, 63). Cambridge University Press.
● Fiscaletti, Davide and Sorli, Amrit. (2005). “A-Temporal Physical Space and Thermodynamics of Life”, The General Science Journal, Scribd.
● Koslowski, Peter. (2002). Progress, Apocalypse, and Completion of History and Life after Death of the Human Person in the World Religions (thermodynamics, pgs. 4-5). Springer.
● Wilson, Vince. (2008). Ghost Science (thermodynamics, pgs. 30-32). LuLu.

External links
● Cessation thermodynamics - IoHT Books.
● Laws of Thermodynamics and Reincarnation (2005 discussion) – Belief.net.