Ivan Pavlov Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Daniel P. Todes

Critical Essay by Daniel P. Todes

SOURCE: "Pavlov's Physiology Factory," in Isis, Vol. 88, No. 2, June, 1997, pp. 205-46.

In the following essay, Todes details the work produced in Pavlov's laboratory at the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine, analyzing Pavlov's scientific and managerial vision, as well as the forces and relations of production in the lab.

What is a scientific laboratory? It is a small world, a small corner of reality. And in this small corner man labors with his mind at the task of . . . knowing this reality in order correctly to predict what will happen, .. . to even direct this reality according to his discretion, to command it, if this is within our technical means.

—Ivan Pavlov (1918)

In four successive years Ivan Pavlov was nominated for the Nobel Prize, and each time the committee confronted the same question: To what extent were the products of Pavlov's laboratory truly...
(read more)