Sympathy: A HistoryOur modern day word for sympathy is derived from the classical Greek word for fellow feeling. Both in the vernacular as well as in the various specialist literatures within philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, and history, sympathy and empathy are routinely conflated. In practice, they are also used to refer to a large variety of complex, all too familiar social phenomena: for example, simultaneous yawning or the giggles. Moreover,