Paul Ham  - The Soul - video Dailymotion

ACM Entertainment

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

Transcript

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.

Paul Ham - The Soul

Category

Transcript

Recommended