Of Mind and Man: The Historical Context of Rene Descartes' Contribution to Physiological Psychology

Cogito, ergo sum. With these words, Descartes established the foundation of his philosophy of man, man's consciousness, and man's place in the world.In 1924, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian physiologist, Pavlov, wrote: Three hundred years ago Descartes evolved the idea of the reflex. Starting from the assumption that animals behaved simply as machines, he regarded every activity of the organism as a necessary reaction to some external stimulus, the connection between the stimulus and response being made through a definite nervous path: and this connection, he stated, was the fundamental purpose of the nervous structures in the animal body. This was the basis on which the study of the nervous system was firmly established. The author is a retired professor who taught medical physiology and humanities after earning advanced degrees in both. He has appeared on the Discovery Channel in the Crime to Remember series in an episode entitled, "The Shot Doctor," which features his true crime book, Zora Hurston and the Strange Case of Ruby McCollum." The current publication is based upon his 1982 Florida State University dissertation in the humanities.