14 HISTORY OF TEACHING ABOUT REFLEX

To the famous discoveries of the XVII century. relates to the discovery of the reflex nature of behavior.

The term "reflex" appeared in the physics of R. Descartes. This concept meant the end of the mechanistic picture of the world and embodied the behavior of living beings. The concept of R. Descartes formed during the period when the analysis of the organism and its functions made a real revolution in anatomical and physiological research. A crushing blow to medieval biology, which believed that “entities” and “forms” were fundamental factors of the phenomena, was caused by the discovery of the circulatory mechanism by William Harvey. A similar breakthrough was made by R. Descartes' discovery of the reflex nature of behavior, which can be called a product of the same attitude and the same ideological spirit.

R. Descartes was repelled by the fact that the interaction of organisms with the surrounding bodies can be explained by the nervous machine, consisting of the brain as a center and the nerve “tubes” divorced from it by radii. The absence of any exact information about the nature of the nervous process led R. Descartes to portray him on the model of the blood circulation process, the knowledge of which acquired reliable reference points in an experimental study. Although the concept of "reflex" in R. Descartes is absent, the main outlines of this term are quite clearly marked.

The emergence of the concept of reflex is the result of the introduction into psychophysiology of schemes that have been formed under the influence of the views of optics and mechanics. The extension of the physical categories of the organism to the physical categories allowed comprehending it deterministically, removing it from the motivated influence of the soul as a special entity.

In accordance with the Cartesian model, external objects act on the peripheral ends of the nerve "threads" placed inside the nerve "tubes". The latter, stretching, open the valves of the holes leading from the brain to the nerves through which the "animal spirits" are directed to the proper muscles, which ultimately "inflate". Tracing the path that animal spirits travel along the nerves from the receptors to the brain, then to the muscles, R. Descartes created an image of a reflex arc.

Centuries later, the hypothesis that the relationship of muscle reactions with sensations provoking them can be modified, transformed and thus give the desired course of behavior to be used as the basis for materialistic associative psychology David Gartley.

The German doctor and chemist G. É. Stiel (1660–1734) spoke against the reflex principle. He argued that between life processes and the facts of physics and chemistry there is only a visible identity and that not a single organic function is realized mechanically, and everything is checked by a surviving soul.