A Theory of Death

A Theory of Death aims to understand what death is, for its own sake. It is not aimed at justifying or challenging medical practices or laws surrounding organ transplantation, nor any other policy or practice, though its conclusions are relevant to these issues. The book seeks only after the truth about death, as a natural biological phenomenon.

The idea that there is such a thing as "the truth about death" is a deep and broad philosophical claim of its own, requiring substantial justification and clarification. It is opposed to a family of views which claim that death is a social construction, a social choice, or a matter for linguistic decision. These claims are prevalent in the bioethical literature on death and deserve careful analysis. This book engages thoroughly with these underlying issues in the philosophy of science and philosophy of language, defending the view known as scientific realism: the natural world exists independently of our theories and social practices, and we do not "construct" death.

This book develops a theory of life on Earth from multiple complementary perspectives, as a dynamic, thermodynamic, chemical, and physiological system embedded in an ancient evolutionary context, and explains death as the event when entropy overwhelms homeostasis. Along the way, it explores much broader philosophical ideas about the nature of truth and reality, how our words and concepts are related to the world, and how we can come to know about the natural world.

A Theory of Death will be of interest to bioethicists and clinicians whose study or practice relates to death and its determination, to philosophers of science and biology, to biomedical scientists who study mechanisms of cellular and organismic death, and more broadly, to anyone with an interest in the nature of death as a natural biological phenomenon.

Michael Nair-Collins is Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine at Florida State University College of Medicine. His research on death, brain death, organ donation, and medical futility has been published widely in philosophy, bioethics, and medical journals.