Lamarckism by Other Means: Interpreting Pavlov's Conditioned Reflexes in Twentieth-Century Britain

Journal of the History of Biology
Oliver Hill-Andrews

Abstract

This essay examines the reception of Ivan Pavlov's work on conditioned reflexes in early to mid-twentieth century Britain. Recent work on the political interpretation of biology has shown that the nineteenth-century strategy of "making socialists" was undermined by August Weismann's attacks on the inheritance of acquired characters. I argue that Pavlov's research reinvigorated socialist hopes of transforming society and the people in it. I highlight the work of Pavlov's interpreters, notably the scientific journalist J. G. Crowther, the biologist Lancelot Hogben, and the science writer H. G. Wells, who made Pavlov's work accessible to a British audience and embraced the socialist implications of his research - especially the idea that people could be persuaded to become socialists through science writing for a nonspecialist audience and through use of a simplified language such as Basic English. They saw, in the followers of National Socialism, how Pavlovian conditioning could create a national movement, and believed that this could be used for their own more democratic form of socialism. In the final part of the essay, I suggest that this broad socio-cultural movement to reshape humanity proved controversial, especially in the...Continue Reading

References

Aug 1, 1990·Social History of Medicine : the Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine·D Rapp
Jan 29, 2002·Isis; an International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences·K Pandora
Dec 18, 2013·Isis; an International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences·Jim Endersby
Oct 17, 2015·Journal of the History of Biology·Steindór J Erlingsson
Mar 2, 2017·Journal of the History of Biology·Cristiano Turbil
Jun 21, 2018·British Journal for the History of Science·Jim Endersby

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