The soul was, in religious belief, the spiritual essence of an individual, existing beyond the limits of the physical body.
History and specifics[]
In 2269, Leonard McCoy theorized that transporters actually created identical duplicates of people then destroyed the original body, and if so, wondered if the soul, if it existed, was duplicated as well. James T. Kirk theorized that the ability to worry about the question proved that it was, and Montgomery Scott argued that since the soul was immortal by definition, then if it existed, it could not be destroyed. Spock later added that, since there was no known way to prove the existence of the soul, the question was meaningless. (TOS novel: Spock Must Die!)
The Konor were a Samdian group who believed that those who did not possess their telepathic abilities were "Ikonor", or lacking souls, until 2365 when they were proven wrong by Data, who had been undergoing his own struggle with the question of whether or not he possessed a soul. (TNG novel: Metamorphosis)
The Bajoran word pagh translated as soul. (DS9 novel: The Soul Key)
Appendices[]
External links[]
- Soul article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.
- Soul article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.