Paul Ham on the soul

Acclaimed historian Paul Ham is a formerSunday Times correspondent, with a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics. With his latest book, he explores the driving force in human history: the relationship between the soul and the mind. 

Almost everyone thinks they have a soul, but nobody knows what it is. For thousands of years it was an ‘organ’, something that was part of all of us and survived the death of the body. The soul could be saved, condemned, tortured, bought. Then, mysteriously, it disappeared.  

The Enlightenment called it the ‘mind’. And today, neuroscientists demonstrate that the mind is the creation of the brain. The ‘religious soul’ lives on, in the minds of the faithful, while the secular ‘soul’ means whatever you want it to mean. 

In The Soul: A History of the Human Mind critically acclaimed historian Paul Ham explores the idea of the soul and shows how these beliefs have animated and driven the history of humankind.