Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov () (
September 14 1849 –
February 27 1936) was a
Russian physiologist,
psychologist, and
physician. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize in
Physiology or
Medicine in
1904 for research pertaining to the digestive system. Pavlov was widely known for first describing the phenomenon now known as
classical conditioning in his experiments with dogs.
Pavlov was born in
Ryazan,
Russia. He began his higher education as a seminary student, but dropped out and enrolled in the
University of St. Petersburg to study the natural sciences. He received his doctorate in 1879.
|
Pavlov's Dog, Pavlov Museum, 2005 |
In the 1890s, Pavlov was investigating the
gastric function of
dogs by externalizing a
salivary gland so he could collect, measure, and analyze the
saliva produced in response to food under different conditions. He noticed that the dogs tended to salivate before food was actually delivered to their mouths, and set out to investigate this "psychic secretion", as he called it. He decided that this was more interesting than the chemistry of saliva, and changed the focus of his research, carrying out a long series of experiments in which he manipulated the stimuli occurring before the presentation of food. He thereby established the basic laws for the establishment and extinction of what he called "conditional reflexes" — i.e., reflex responses, like salivation, that only occurred conditional upon specific previous experiences of the animal. These experiments were carried out in the
1890s and
1900s, and were known to western scientists through translations of individual accounts, but first became fully available in English in a book published in 1927.
Pavlov was a dextrous operator who was compulsive about his working hours and habits. He would sit down to lunch at exactly 12 o'clock, he would go to bed at exactly the same time each evening, would always feed his dogs at exactly the same time each night and he would always leave
Leningrad for
Estonia on vacation on the same day each year. This behavior changed when his son Victor died in the
White Army — after which he suffered from
insomnia.
Unlike many pre-revolutionary scientists, Pavlov was highly regarded by the
Soviet government, and he was able to continue his researches until he reached a considerable age. Pavlov himself was not favorable towards Marxism, but as a
Nobel laureate he was seen as a valuable political asset.[
1][
2] After returning from his first visit to the United States in 1923 (the second was in 1929), he publicly denounced Communism, stated that the basis for international Marxism was false, and said that "For the kind of social experiment that you are making, I would not sacrifice a frog's hind legs!" In 1924, when the sons of priests were expelled from the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad (the former Imperial Medical Academy), he resigned his chair of physiology announcing, "I also am the son of a priest, and if you expel the others I will go too!" [
3] After the murder of
Sergei Kirov in
1934, Pavlov wrote several letters to
Molotov criticizing the mass persecutions which followed and asking for the reconsideration of cases pertaining to several people he knew personally.
In later life he was particularly interested in trying to use conditioning to establish an experimental model of the induction of
neuroses. He died in
Leningrad. His
laboratory in
Saint Petersburg has been carefully preserved.
Interestingly, Pavlov's term "conditional reflex" ("условный рефлекс") was mistranslated from the
Russian as "conditioned reflex", and other scientists reading his work concluded that since such reflexes were conditioned, they must be produced by a process called
conditioning. As Pavlov's work became known in the West, particularly through the writings of
John B. Watson, the idea of "conditioning" as an automatic form of learning became a key concept in the developing specialism of
comparative psychology, and the general approach to psychology that underlay it,
behaviorism.
Bertrand Russell was an enthusiastic advocate of the importance of Pavlov's work for
philosophy of mind.
Pavlov's research on conditional reflexes greatly influenced not only science, but also popular culture. The phrase "Pavlov's dog" is often used to describe someone who merely reacts to a situation rather than uses critical thinking. Pavlovian conditioning was a major theme in
Aldous Huxley's
dystopian novel,
Brave New World, and also to a large degree in
Thomas Pynchon's
Gravity's Rainbow.
It is popularly believed that Pavlov always signaled the occurrence of food by ringing a bell. However, his writings record the use of a wide variety of stimuli, including
whistles,
metronomes,
tuning forks, in addition to a range of visual stimuli. When, in the 1990s, it became easier for Western scientists to visit Pavlov's laboratory, no trace of a bell could be found.
*
Classical conditioning*
Behavior Modification*
Ryazan*Boakes, R. A. (1984). From Darwin to behaviourism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Firkin, B. G. & Whitworth, J. A. (1987).
Dictionary of Medical Eponyms. Parthenon Publishing. ISBN 1-85070-333-7
*Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditioned reflexes. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
*Todes, D. P. (1997). "Pavlov's Physiological Factory," Isis. Vol. 88. The History of Science Society, p. 205-246.
*
PBS article*
Nobel Prize website biography of I. P. Pavlov*
Institute of Experimental Medicine article on Pavlov*
Link to full text of Pavlov's lectures
