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Death

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

  • 132 Accesses

Synonyms

Extinction; Fatality; Mortality; Phenoptosis; Senescence; Thanatology

Definition

The irreversible cessation of all biological functions in individual organisms. A high degree of consensus focuses on cessation of pulse, breathing, brain activity, and personhood as defining characteristics of clinical death in human beings.

Introduction

Death is a phenomenon most human beings above the ages of about 4–7 “understand” and think about somewhat (Talwar et al. 2011), and medical science is largely clear about it, if with some caveats (Laureys 2005). But we retain diverse cultural and religious views on the theory and actuality of death and dying, while its universality is reflected unevenly in interdisciplinary sources on the topic. In one of the first edited, interdisciplinary, systematized collections on the subject, Feifel (1959) remarked how little was known; this was despite Weismann’s (1889) seminal work on programmed death. Death here is taken to be the complete and...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Colin Feltham

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  1. Colin Feltham
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Correspondence to Colin Feltham .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland Univ Dept of Psycholgy, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana Weekes-Shackelford

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  3. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Lisa L M Welling

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Feltham, C. (2016). Death. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_536-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_536-1

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