Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise

by Daniel P. Todes

Russian physiologist and Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov is most famous for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex and the classic experiment in which he trained a dog to salivate at... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801866901
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.3" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Insights into the Scientific Process

Dr. Todes's exhaustive study of Ivan Pavlov's laboratory from 1891 to 1904 illustrates the transformation of a lone-investigator to the manager of a large team of scientists all contributing data, experiments, and methods to a larger body of work. This change in scientific style is characeristic of the professionalization of scientific careers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and has much to say about the origins of current laboratory enterprises with teams of technicians, research assistants, graduate students, and post-doctoral scientists all working under a single senior scientist. Todes's detailed analysis of letters, laboratory notebooks, and archival collections in Russia makes this the definitive work in English on Ivan Pavlov's work. It is limited to the work on digestion that earned Pavlov the Nobel Prize, but does not provide a complete account of the work on conditioned reflexes for which Pavlov is now most famous, a subject that the author may have chosen to save for a larger biography of Pavlov. Nonetheless, if we want to understand how a previously obscure physiologist became the leader of a world-class research institute, using the Russian royal family for support, Todes's work is the place to start. Definitive and well worth reading!