Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov; 26 September 1849 – 27 February 1936) was a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning. From his childhood days Pavlov demonstrated intellectual brilliance along with an unusual energy which he named "the instinct for research". Inspired by the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most eminent of the Russian literary critics of the 1860s, and I. M. Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career and devoted his life...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth14 September 1849
CityRyazan, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
I am convinced that an important stage of human thought will have been reached when the physiological and the psychological, the objective and the subjective, are actually united, when the tormenting conflicts or contradictions between my consciousness and my body will have been factually resolved or discarded.
The Sun-Paul must consider only one thing: what is the relation of this or that external reaction of the animal to the phenomena of the external world?
Thanks to our present surgical methods in physiology we can demonstrate at any time almost all phenomena of digestion without the loss of even a single drop of blood, without a single scream from the animal undergoing the experiment.
But man has still another powerful resource: natural science with its strictly objective methods.
School yourself to demureness and patience. Learn to inure yourself to drudgery in science. Learn, compare, collect the facts.
Gradualness, gradualness, and gradualness. From the very beginning of your work, school yourself to severe gradualness in the accumulation of knowledge.
It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread - the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.
Appetite, craving for food, is a constant and powerful stimulator of the gastric glands.
It goes without saying that the desire to accomplish the task with more confidence, to avoid wasting time and labour, and to spare our experimental animals as much as possible, made us strictly observe all the precautions taken by surgeons in respect to their patients.
It is still open to question whether psychology is a natural science, or whether it can be regarded as a science at all.
From the described experiment it is clear that the mere act of eating, the food even not reaching the stomach, determines the stimulation of the gastric glands.
Mankind will possess incalculable advantages and extraordinary control over human behavior when the scientific investigator will be able to subject his fellow men to the same external analysis he would employ for any natural object, and when the human mind will contemplate itself not from within but from without.
Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly.
While you are experimenting, do not remain content with the surface of things.