The Truth About Pavlov And His Dogs

Publish date: 2024-05-07

Born in the Russian village of Ryazan in 1849, Ivan Pavlov came from a family known for "iron health" and failed priests named Ivan. Per biographer Daniel Todes, Pavlov had two uncles named Ivan, and both got defrocked. One uncle was an alcoholic brawler with a "Herculean constitution." His preferred version of laying on of hands involved wrecking fools in village-wide fights. The other Uncle Ivan was a hard-drinking prankster who removed corpses from coffins and made them "[roam] the graveyard in white robes." Their brother Petr also became a priest, yet still fathered Ivan the physiologist.

Pavlov tried to follow in Petr's footsteps. According to Todes, Pavlov went to a theological school and then enrolled in seminary. But in a stroke of earthly intervention, the '60s became a period of radical changes in Russia. After Tsar Alexander II emancipated the country's roughly 23 million serfs in 1861, intellectuals started discussing progressive politics and science, and it stopped Pavlov in his tracks. His religious views evolved, thanks partly to Charles Darwin, according to PBS. Influenced by people like literary critic D. I. Pisarev and the father of Russian physiology, Ivan Sechenov, Pavlov decided to leave theology behind. Instead, he studied science at St. Petersburg University and immersed himself in physiology.

Despite his now-avowed atheism, Pavlov could relate to believing in a higher power. Writing to his future wife, Serafima Vasilievna Karchevskaya, he calls science "a kind of God, before whom I reveal everything, before whom I discard wretched worldly vanity."

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