In ancient Chinese philosophy, what is the two-letter name for the vital energy that animates all things?

The body and mind were not separate entities in Chinese thought, Lightman writes, but both aspects of qi. Ancient Western traditions split the body and soul, but most modern philosophers see the mind as just as physical as the body.

They only partially penetrate bone.

What high-frequency electromagnetic emanations, able to penetrate most matter, were first discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen in late 1895?

Lightman tells the story of how, when Röntgen demonstrated the technology on his wife and she saw the bones in her hand, she exclaimed, “I have seen my death.” It was the first glimpse a living person got of the inside of her body.

Think of corazón, or coeur.

In 2001, a man survived 151 days after being surgically implanted with an AbioCor, the world’s first self-contained version of what device?

The recipient, Lightman writes, reported the oddness of hearing a “whirring sound” instead of the heartbeat to which he was accustomed. Lightman envisions a future in which intrabody nanobots allow us a real-time look at every process going on within ourselves.

In what short novel does the protagonist lie “on his armour-like back” and lift his head up to see for the first time “his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections”?

At the beginning of Franz Kafka’s story, Gregor Samsa is horrified to find himself transformed into a bug. But, as Lightman writes, “faced with a grotesque mismatch between body and mind, he makes do.”

Atlantic Trivia, May 26, 2026: Mind-Body Connection

In 2001, a man survived 151 days after being surgically implanted with an AbioCor, the world’s first self-contained version of what device?

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