Science often inspires science fiction writers to explore fantastic scenarios that may be just round the corner. However, sometimes, science fiction can also be an inspiration for science. One such inspiration for me was The Prestige by Christopher Priest, subsequently adapted into a movie by the same name by Batman director Chris Nolan. In this atmospheric story, rival Victorian magicians Robert Angier and Alfred Borden (played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) engage in a bitter struggle to perfect the best magic trick. Borden creates an illusion where he walks into one cabinet on stage and immediately reappears from a second cabinet some distance away, defying the fundamental laws of physics. Angier, determined not to be out-classed, seeks out Nikola Tesla, the real life Serbian-American genius inventor of AC electric current, who builds him a machine that can duplicate matter. Angier now has the means to duplicate himself anywhere in the theater, thereby upstaging Borden's illusion. Currently, such machines are science fiction but without giving the plot away, if duplication were possible, it does raise some interesting questions about the nature of minds, bodies and unique individuals.
What if it were really possible to copy the body perfectly, right down to its exact molecular structure? Would the duplicated body have the same mind? Logic dictates that if the mind is a product of the brain, then two identical brains should produce two identical minds. Or maybe the mind is separate from the brain and therefore not dependent on the material body, which is more akin to the notion of souls? Duplication of the body would not then duplicate the mind. These are the sorts of questions that scientists address in "gedanken," or thought experiments to investigate human reason and intuition.
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