"Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) is famous for his Nobel Prize-winning studies of digestion and, especially, his investigations of conditional reflexes, through which he attempted to understand and ease the "torments" of human consciousness. Based on rich archival materials, this work provides a uniquely rich and readable introduction to his life and work. The book follows Pavlov from his youth as a provincial seminarian to his scientific studies, traumas, and professional success in the glittering capital of St. Petersburg through world war and two revolutions, international celebrity status, and his complex relationship with the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Stalin. Exploring Pavlov's quest to constrain the psyche within mechanistic law, the work explains his innovative experimental techniques and approach, discusses his interpretive practices as a physiologist, reveals the personalities and importance of his favorite experimental dogs, and analyzes his important, but little-known, experiments on chimpanzees. The work ends with a discussion of the two manuscripts on which Pavlov labored during his last days, which reveal the relationship between the great scientist's work and his psychological drive for certainty amid the unforeseeable calamities in life and express his final thoughts about the relationship between science, Christianity, and Communism"--

"Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) is famous for his Nobel Prize-winning studies of digestion and, especially, his investigations of conditional reflexes, through which he attempted to understand and ease the "torments" of human consciousness. Based on rich archival materials, this work provides a uniquely rich and readable introduction to his life and work. The book follows Pavlov from his youth as a provincial seminarian to his scientific studies, traumas, and professional success in the glittering capital of St. Petersburg through world war and two revolutions, international celebrity status, and his complex relationship with the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Stalin. Exploring Pavlov's quest to constrain the psyche within mechanistic law, the work explains his innovative experimental techniques and approach, discusses his interpretive practices as a physiologist, reveals the personalities and importance of his favorite experimental dogs, and analyzes his important, but little-known, experiments on chimpanzees. The work ends with a discussion of the two manuscripts on which Pavlov labored during his last days, which reveal the relationship between the great scientist's work and his psychological drive for certainty amid the unforeseeable calamities in life and express his final thoughts about the relationship between science, Christianity, and Communism"--

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

This 'Very Short Introduction' provides an up-to-date account of the problems, concerns and nature of archaeology, with reference to all the latest archaeological techniques, theories, and excavations.

This lively and accessible introduction to Plato focuses on the philosophy and argument of his writings, drawing the reader into Plato's way of doing philosophy, and the general themes of his thinking. This is not a book to leave the reader standing in the outer court of introduction and background information, but leads directly into Plato's argument. It looks at Plato as a thinker grappling with philosophical problems in a variety of ways, rather than a philosopher with a fully worked-out system. It includes a brief account of Plato's life and the various interpretations that have been drawn from the sparse remains of information. It stresses the importance of the founding of the Academy and the conception of philosophy as a subject. Julia Annas discusses Plato's style of writing: his use of the dialogue form, his use of what we today call fiction, and his philosophical transformation of myths. She also looks at his discussions of love and philosophy, his attitude to women, and to homosexual love, explores Plato's claim that virtue is sufficient for happiness, and touches on his arguments for the immortality of the soul and his ideas about the nature of the universe. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

From the beginning of time, humans have been driven by both a fear of the unknown and a curiosity to know. We have always yearned to know what lies ahead, whether threat or safety, scarcity or abundance. Throughout human history, our forebears tried to create certainty in the unknown, by seeking to influence outcomes with sacrifices to gods, preparing for the unexpected with advice from oracles, and by reading the stars through astrology. As scientific methods improve and computer technology develops we become ever more confident of our capacity to predict and quantify the future by accumulating and interpreting patterns form the past, yet the truth is there is still no certainty to be had. In this Very Short Introduction Jennifer Gidley considers some of our most burning questions: What is "the future "?; Is the future a time yet to come?; Or is it a utopian place?; Does the future have a history?; Is there only one future or are there many possible futures? She asks if the future can ever be truly predicted or if we create our own futures - both hoped for and feared - by our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and concludes by analysing how we can learn to study the future. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

"Learn about the Russian scientist who introduced the idea of conditioned reflexes in behavior."--From source other than the Library of Congress