Noga Arikha
Historian of Ideas, Writer, Paris
Noga Arikha is a historian of ideas and philosopher, the author of essays on mind, body, science and medicine, and of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours (2007). She currently lives in Paris and is affiliated with Institut Jean Nicod (Ecole Normale) and SPHERE (Paris 7). She has just completed a book based on neuropsychiatric patients and is at work on a life of Franz Boas.
Written by Noga Arikha
essay
War and peace
How evil happens
Why some people choose to do evil remains a puzzle, but are we starting to understand how this behaviour is triggered?
Noga Arikha
essay
Neuroscience
The interoceptive turn
The science of how we sense ourselves from within, including our bodily states, is creating a radical picture of selfhood
Noga Arikha
The hand-held’s tale
Noga ArikhaI asked this because we are so used to constant change, so used to the next technological fix, the perpetual, unstoppable, ever-increasing growth of technological power, the transformation of cities and, sadly, landscapes by the drive for more, better, further. Sure, this is already an old story, and hence mine is somewhat of a rhetorical question. After all people started bemoaning change with the industrial revolution; and some people, like the Italian Futurists, celebrated it. But the rate of change has only accelerated, and the process cannot be stopped. Yet I still remember visiting old peasants in the French or Italian countryside who only spoke their own “patois” or “dialetto”, and...