Ivan Pavlov, Daniel P. Todes
Ivan Pavlov, Daniel P. Todes
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Ivan Pavlov
A Very Short Introduction

Author: Daniel P. Todes

Narrator: Gary Tiedemann

Unabridged: 4 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/27/2022


Synopsis

Daniel P. Todes provides concise introduction to the life and science of the great Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936). Todes weaves together Pavlov's life, values, context, and science by focusing upon his quest to understand the psyche and the "torments of our consciousness." This introduction follows the origins and maturation of Pavlov's quest from his early life in a priestly family in provincial Riazan, to his struggles and late professional success in the glittering capital of St. Petersburg, through the cataclysmic destruction of his world during the Bolshevik seizure of power and civil war of 1917-1921, to the rebuilding of his life in his 70s as a "prosperous dissident" during the Leninist 1920s, and his success and personal torments in 1929-1936 during the industrialization, cultural revolution, and terror of Stalin times. Beyond a basic biography, Todes devotes particular attention to Pavlov's Nobel Prize-winning research on digestion (1891-1903) and his iconic studies of conditional reflexes and higher nervous activity (1903-1936), as well as his experiments with dogs. Todes shows that Pavlov was not a behaviorist, did not use a bell, and was uninterested in training dogs. The Russian scientist sought to explain not merely external behaviors, but the emotional and intellectual life of animals and humans.

Author Bio

Daniel P. Todes is Professor Emeritus of History of Medicine at John Hopkins University. His research concerns the relationship of scientific ideas to the context in which they are generated, and the history of science and medicine in Russia. He is the author of Darwin Without Malthus: The Struggle for Existence in Russian Evolutionary Thought and three books about Pavlov: Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise; a short biography for young adults: Ivan Pavlov: Exploring the Animal Machine; and the first archive-based scholarly biography in any language, Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science. His research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

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