消化生理に関する研究でノーベル賞に輝いたイワン・パヴロフ（1849-1936年）は牧師の家庭に生まれ外科医を経て研究の道に入りました。条件反射と高次神経活動の研究や、犬を使った有名な実験を含む精神現象に関する業績を概括します。パヴロフの研究には自身の経験や価値観が色濃く反映されており、探求したのは動物や人の感情や知性であり外的振る舞いではないと指摘します。チンパンジーを使った最晩年の実験の意義、科学・キリスト教・ボリシェビキの関係についての考えも紹介します。
 

• Based on close reading of manuscripts and publications by Pavlov and his coworkers
• Offers new interpretation of Pavlov's theory and practices as a scientist
• Serves as authoritative, readable introduction to Pavlov's life, times, and work

    
In this book, 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. Fundamentally reinterpreting Pavlov's famous research on conditional reflexes, 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. Furthermore, this iconic "objectivist" was a profoundly anthropomorphic thinker whose science was suffused with his own experiences and values. Exploring the two unpublished manuscripts upon which Pavlov was working when he died, Todes shows the importance of his little-known experiments on chimps and explores his final thoughts about the relationship of science, Christianity, and Bolshevism.