The Spenglerian vision of “civilization” as the final stage of a culture did not stop Toynbee (23) from taking civilization as the unit of research. In fact, in the introduction to his Study of History Toynbee discusses the problem of the minimum historical unit, discarding “national history” as isolated and unreal because history in fact corresponds to multiple entities that embrace a more extended region. What is important to him above all is the comparative study of civilizations, a concept that we often find replaced by that of “society.” Of greatest interest (for our purposes) is Toynbee’s interpretation of the historical process. No longer is the subject of history a biological being marked by destiny, but rather an entity that, between the open and the closed, is guided by impulses or circumspection in facing obstacles.

 We must also take note of Toynbee’s explanation of social movement as involving challenge and response. He does not, however, use the term “impulse” in a strictly Bergsonian sense, nor is his use of the idea of challenge-response a simple transplanting of stimulus-response or Pavlovian reflex. Finally, what is of most interest to us is his understanding that the great religions transcend the disintegration of civilizations, and that they are what allows us to have the intuition of a “plan” and a “purpose” in history. In any event, the accommodation of his model to a particular historical form kept him from an understanding of temporality.

In: Historiological Discussions, Silo, 

Chapter 2: The Past Seen as Without Temporal Foundation 2.2 History as Form 

Ivan Pavlov (1849 - 1936)

Topics

Academic Life: Pavlov's greatest contribution

Pavlov's research into the physiology of digestion led him to define the science of ‘conditioned reflexes’, paying particular attention to the ‘psychic phase’ of secretion. In a now-classic experiment, Pavlov trained a hungry dog to salivate when it heard a bell that was paired with the sight of food. Simply put, food presentation systematically triggered a salivation response. When the presentation of food was frequently associated with a neutral stimulus, in this case the sound of a bell, these simultaneously experienced stimuli (presentation of food plus sound of the bell) led to a state in which the neutral stimulus (the sound of the bell) could trigger the same systematic salivation reaction as the sight of the food. This new conditional reaction was considered a ‘mental reaction’ because there was no longer any physical connection between the acoustic stimulus and the salivary reflex. For Pavlov, this new connection between stimuli required a change at the neuronal level, which he located in the cerebral cortex, which he saw as the site of mental processes. Thus, Pavlov developed a conceptual approach that emphasised the importance of conditioning and linked human behaviour to the nervous system. In 1903, at the XIV International Medical Congress in Madrid, Pavlov gave a lecture on ‘Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals’. In it, he proved that a conditioned reflex should be considered a psychophysiological phenomenon. From this it was concluded that the conditioned reflex is indicative of the mechanism of the most highly developed forms of reaction to the world in both animals and humans, and thus enables an ‘objective’ study of mental activity. The fact that Pavlov and his colleagues proved that conditioned reflexes originate in the cerebral cortex revealed for the first time the fundamental laws that govern the functioning of the cerebral cortex and the large cerebral hemispheres. Thus, the integrated Pavlovian theory of higher nervous activity was formed. Later, Pavlov described three principles for the theory of reflexes: the principle of determinism, the principle of analysis and synthesis, and the principle of structure.

Major works

• Pavlov, I.P. 1902. The Work of the Disgestive Glands. London: Griffin.

• Pavlov, I.P. 1927. Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

• Pavlov, I.P. 1928. Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes: Twenty-five Years of Objective Study of the High Nervous Activity (Behavior) of Animals. Translated by W. Horsley Gantt. New York: International.

• Pavlov, I.P. 1955. Selected Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.

• Pavlov, I.P. 1994. Psychopathology and Psychiatry. New Jersey: Transaction.

Influence

In the field of psychology, Pavlov's research laid the foundation for the development of so-called ‘behaviourism’, which assumes that behavioural reactions can be traced back to external stimuli and that these reactions can be changed or conditioned by learning processes. Pavlov thus contributed to our understanding of associative learning processes.

Pavlov received worldwide recognition and left behind a large school of physiologists, from which many important students emerged. His admirable scientific legacy consists of the fact that he left behind a brilliant group of students who further developed the ideas of their teacher, and a multitude of followers around the world who are still gaining new insights based on his research today.