These are terms drawn from psychology or philosophy; they are “nebulous,” as philosopher of science Alfred I. Tauber has pointed out, adding that “the self can hardly be viewed as a scientific concept.”11 In fact, it was barely even a concept at all until about the seventeenth century, when languages such as English and German began to use the word “self” as something other than an intensifier (as in “I did it myself”). Then, as we shall see in a later chapter, the “self” began to replace the “soul” as a special kind of kernel within each individual, walled off in part from everyone else.
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