Paul Ham - The Soul
Paul Ham discusses his upcoming book, The Soul, a history of the human mind, from the earliest expression of self-consciousness to its unshakeable beliefs in the great religions and political systems. Footage Penguin Books
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00:00Have you ever wondered where your mind came from, the inner voice that we all have that
00:06says, I am, I think, I believe? And where do our beliefs come from? Who put them there?
00:14And why do our beliefs differ? My idea of the good is your evil. My idea of right is
00:20your wrong. My black is your white. I'm Paul Ham and we'll explore those questions
00:25and many more in my new book, The Soul, A History of the Human Mind, to be published
00:31by Penguin Random House in 2024. It tells the story of the mind or the soul from the
00:38early cave dwellers all the way through to the era of artificial intelligence. For thousands
00:43of years, the mind was called the soul, the essence of ourselves, that part of us that
00:48when we died, went to heaven or hell or to the underworld. The soul could be bought or
00:54sold. It could be saved. It could be tortured. It could be excommunicated. And then about
01:00300 years ago, during the Enlightenment, the soul was called the mind and the mind became
01:06the creation of the brain. Now this is a vast story and it appears quite intimidating. However,
01:14you can dip into it wherever you like and choose to take a bite out of a subject you're
01:18interested in. It's more of a banquet than a book. You can delve into the ancient Egyptian
01:24idea of the immortal soul or the rise of the Christian soul and the soul under Islam.
01:31Or you could look at the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. And the book takes you
01:37forward up to the dark night of the soul under totalitarian rule. This book then is an adventure
01:43into ourselves, but it anchors the human mind in the story of humanity. And it looks at
01:52how our minds create our beliefs. And it makes the point, and I think in this sense
01:58transforms our understanding of history, that beliefs are the engines of history. Writing
02:04this book has changed my life and my mind. Reading it may change yours.