This is a definitive, deeply researched biography of Russian
physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) and is the first scholarly
biography to be published in any language. The book is Todes's
magnum opus, which he has been working on for some twenty years.
Todes makes use of a wealth of archival material to portray
Pavlov's personality, life, times, and scientific work. Combining
personal documents with a close reading of scientific texts, Todes
fundamentally reinterprets Pavlov's famous research on conditional
reflexes. Contrary to legend, Pavlov was not a behaviorist (a
misimpression captured in the false iconic image of his "training a
dog to salivate to the sound of a bell"); rather, he sought to
explain not simply external behaviors, but the emotional and
intellectual life of animals and humans. This iconic "objectivist"
was actually a profoundly anthropomorphic thinker whose science was
suffused with his own experiences, values, and subjective
interpretations. This book is also a traditional "life and times"
biography that weaves Pavlov into some 100 years of Russian
history-particularly that of its intelligentsia-from the
emancipation of the serfs to Stalin's time. Pavlov was born to a
family of priests in provincial Ryazan before the serfs were
emancipated, made his home and professional success in the
glittering capital of St. Petersburg in late imperial Russia,
suffered the cataclysmic destruction of his world during the
Bolshevik seizure of power and civil war of 1917-1921, rebuilt his
life in his 70s as a "prosperous dissident" during the Leninist
1920s, and flourished professionally as never before in 1929-1936
during the industrialization, revolution, and terror of Stalin.
Todes's story of this powerful personality and extraordinary man is
based upon interviews with surviving coworkers and family members
(along with never-before-analyzed taped interviews from the 1960s
and 1970s), examination of hundreds of scientific works by Pavlov
and his coworkers, and close analysis of materials from some
twenty-five archives. The documents range from the records of his
student years at Ryazan Seminary to the transcripts of the
Communist Party cells in his labs, and from his scientific
manuscripts and notebooks to his political speeches; they include
revealing love letters to his future wife and correspondence with
hundreds of lay people, scholars, artists, and Communist Party
leaders; and unpublished memoirs by many coworkers, his daughter,
his wife, and his lover.
General
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