Very few people are aware that it is the 100th
anniversary of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s sabbatical year at the University of
Sussex. In 1912, fresh from many research successes and a Nobel Prize in
Physiology in 1904, he had managed to negotiate a year’s sabbatical leave from
the surgical department of the physiological laboratory at the Institute of
Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg. I am able to say that I am aware of
this unusual episode in Pavlov’s illustrious history because many years ago I
was asked to write a chapter on Pavlov in an Edward de Bono book called ‘The
Greatest Thinkers’[1],
and my research uncovered this relatively unrecognized period of Pavlov’s life.
At that time, Russia was riven with famine and political discontent, and Pavlov
was struggling with the concept of ‘psychical secretion’. He had begun to
realize that the forms of nervous regulation of digestive gland secretion in
dogs could often be conditioned not only by purely physiological factors but
also by what he initially called ‘psychical’ factors. He felt that the time was
right to move away from the political and social turmoil in Russia to develop
his overarching theory of conditioning that he felt would some day consolidate
his role as the eminent physiologist of the century. Having secured funding for
his sabbatical year, he travelled to England. When he arrived he was overjoyed
by the opportunities that the University of Sussex offered him for his
research. He was based in the School of Life Sciences (a building which is now
occupied by administrators and accountants trying to determine how biological
sciences can operate at anything less than an enormous loss), and immediately
set up a conditioning lab to further explore his theories of ‘psychical
secretion’.
Pavlov loved the liberal, academic atmosphere at Sussex, and spent
many hours in what then was euphemistically called ‘East Slope Bar’ (because of
its ability to slope eastwards and be a bar at the same time). He had decided
that his next goal was to prove that associative conditioning was a basic and
universal learning process, and that it was the most basic adaptive learning
mechanism in the animal kingdom. There was no doubt that classical conditioning
was universal – it could be found in primates right down to single celled
organisms (yes, even nematodes), but for Pavlov there was something missing.
His conditioning theory was incomplete. It had to apply to animals of all
kinds, creeds, political persuasion, and psychic state.
To this end, Pavlov dedicated his sabbatical year at the University
of Sussex to determining whether classical conditioning applied to dead as well
as living organisms. This was a stroke of genius. Only very few scientists
possess the insight that allows them to project their theories into areas which
are challenging and paradigm shifting (e.g. Sheldrake[2],
Bem[3]),
but Pavlov was such a scientist.
Pavlov began his research by looking for a source of dead dogs that
would serve as subjects in his research. He very soon found that source at the
‘Goods Inwards’ door of the University Refectory. He negotiated a regular
supply of dead dogs for his experiments, and the University Hospitality
services have recently recognized the historical importance of this by erecting
a brass plaque outside the University cafeteria commemorating their role in
Pavlov’s sabbatical research.
Pavlov conducted his research on the
salivary conditioning of dead dogs with his usual scientific rigour. Having carried
his subjects back to his lab, he placed them in the usual experimental
restraints and began the conditioning trials. I have been lucky enough to
secure some original transcripts of the notes Pavlov kept on those early
experiments. His excitement was palpable. As he writes:
“ I placed the
subject on the experimental table; I rang the bell; I waited very briefly then
I gave the dog the food….. Nothing.! ….No salivation! - I was puzzled. This had always worked
before in the lab in St. Petersburg. Why was this so different in the
University of Sussex? I could not believe that my universal learning principles
did not also apply to dead organisms. But wait….of course! This was only the
first trial. There will be no learning on the first trial! We must pair the
bell with food on more occasions.”
Pavlov’s
scientific logic was impeccable. He continued with his experimental procedure, but time
eventually told a sad story. Although Pavlov had strived manfully to extend his
so-called universal principles of learning to dead animals, it didn’t appear to
work. His dead dogs failed to salivate to the bell CS even after hundreds of
conditioning trials. Nevertheless, being the scientist that he was, and after many hours and days of detailed thought and analysis, Pavlov came
to the obvious conclusion. It was not that dead dogs were not conditionable - they
were in fact deaf. Pavlov had managed to salvage his universal principle of learning by taking a thoughtful and insightful new look at the data. Any of you that have come across a dead dog will be fully
aware that deafness is indeed a feature of dead dogs, and our knowledge of this
feature stems from Pavlov’s pioneering experimental work during
his sabbatical year at the University of Sussex.
[1] De Bono E (1976) The Greatest Thinkers. Weidenfeld & Nicolson:
London
[2] Sheldrake R (2012) The Science Delusion. Coronet.
[3] Bem D. J. (2011) Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for
anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of
Personality & Social psychology, 100, 407-425.
