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This Online Edition Play: Katherine's Questionable Quest for Love and Happiness, by Bo C. Klintberg [text image, no navigation]

This Play:
Katherine’s
Questionable Quest
for Love and
Happiness
(View All Plays)

This Version:
1 January 2008 (1.0)
(View All Versions)

This View Mode:
One Scene Per Page
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SCENE I. The Floridian Liti-Gator

SCENE II. On Battles, Wars, and Meaning

SCENE III. Maximum Happiness, Minimum Unhappiness

SCENE IV. Katherine’s Real Problem

SCENE V. The Mustachio Man

SCENE VI. Death Is Nothing Like a Toothache

SCENE VII. Not In the Hands of the Scientists

SCENE VIII. Important and Unimportant Knowledge

SCENE IX. Physicians Can’t Stop Death

SCENE X. Are Foetuses Potential Persons?

SCENE XI. The Body-Bomb

SCENE XII. The Cartesian Theatre

SCENE XIII. Radha’s Microscope

SCENE XIV. Ontology Drives Explanation

SCENE XV. Another Look at Radha

SCENE XVI. Confessions of a Satisfactionist

Philosophical Play: Katherine's Questionable Quest for Love and Happiness, by Bo C. Klintberg [text image, no navigation]

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SCENE IX. Physicians Can’t Stop Death

1 CHRISTIANUS. And now let’s get back to our real problem, namely death!

2 KATHERINE. But I am still eating! Can’t we continue that lethal conversation some other time?

3 CHRISTIANUS. No, it’s better that we proceed.

4 KATHERINE. Why?

5 CHRISTIANUS. Because in five minutes, or in five hours, or in five days, one of us may be dead; and then we can’t continue this very important discussion.

6 KATHERINE. Why would that matter?

7 CHRISTIANUS. Well, perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered if our final state were nothing but nothingness.

8 KATHERINE. Yes, that’s what I have been saying all along!

9 CHRISTIANUS. But, as I have hinted before, I don’t see any good reason to take the nothingness scenario very seriously.

10 KATHERINE. Why not?

11 CHRISTIANUS. Because it isn’t proven.

12 KATHERINE. What are you saying?

13 CHRISTIANUS. I am saying that no one has proven that the nothingness scenario is correct.

14 KATHERINE. So?

15 CHRISTIANUS. So why believe it?

16 KATHERINE. Well, I believe it because I think it is correct. I think it sounds right.

17 CHRISTIANUS. But that’s not very scientific!

18 KATHERINE. Maybe not. But the scientists will soon have figured out a way to save us from death, anyway.

19 CHRISTIANUS. You see, that’s one of your problems: you are in the hands of the scientists. You have too much faith in them!

20 KATHERINE. But they are very capable and inventive!

21 CHRISTIANUS. Sometimes. But that doesn’t guarantee that they will be able to stop death. Albert Einstein, for example, was a very capable and inventive man, but he couldn’t stop death. He died himself. They all do. [35]

22 KATHERINE. Well, perhaps they can’t stop death right now. But they are trying!

23 CHRISTIANUS. Well, they may say or imply that they are trying, so that they, for example, can get more money to do their research. But that doesn’t mean that they actually will be able to stop death. I mean, they can’t even stop Alzheimer’s yet! [36]

24 KATHERINE. But that’s not the same problem!

25 CHRISTIANUS. You are absolutely right: it isn’t the same problem. Stopping death is much harder.

26 KATHERINE. But some progress in regards to death has been made, right?

27 CHRISTIANUS. No. There is no progress in terms of stopping death.

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Notes (SCENE IX)

[35] IX:21, Einstein: One may get a rough estimate of the influence of Albert Einstein’s (1879–1955) work by inspecting Bynum, Browne and Porter’s dictionary, where Einstein’s name appears in twenty-five different entries (1981, p. 463): ‘Absolute space and time, Aether, Black-body law, Complementarity, Electron, Expanding Universe, Geometry, Gravity, Heat and thermodynamics, Indeterminism, Light, Lightquantum, Mach’s Principle, Mass, Michelson-Morley experiment, Philosophy, Photoelectric effect, Quantum, Rational reconstruction, Relative space and time, Relativity, Simplicity, Space-time, Unified field theory, X-rays’.

W. F. BYNUM, E. J. BROWNE, and ROY PORTER, eds. (1981), Dictionary of the History of Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

[36] IX:23, Alzheimer’s: Christianus may, for example, have read Pierson’s report: ‘Natexis Bleichroeder analyst Corey Davis said Alzheimer's research “has been a graveyard of failed drugs, so it is not surprising that any such product in development would be deemed at high risk”’ (2007).

RANSDELL PIERSON (2007), ‘Wyeth says Alzheimer program a justified long-shot’. Reuters [http://www.reuters.com], Tuesday, 20 March 2007, 1:24 p.m. EDT.

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HOW TO CITE: Bo C. Klintberg (2008), ‘Physicians Can’t Stop Death’ in Katherine’s Questionable Quest for Love and Happiness. Online edition of Philosophical Plays, 1 Jan. 2008. Retrieved [today’s date] from http://philosophicalplays.googlepages.com/pgKQQv1sc09.htm.

All published material in Philosophical Plays, both in the print edition
(ISSN 1654-6296) and in the online edition (ISSN 1654-6318), is
Copyright © 2007-2008 by Bo C. Klintberg. All rights reserved.
No part of these publications may be reproduced, or re-
published, or stored in a retrieval system, without
prior permission in writing from Bo C. Klintberg.

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