Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Science Stories

Factual: Science & Nature

Surprising stories from the history of science told by Naomi Alderman and Philip Ball.

BBC Radio 4 LW

Science Stories: Series 5

Science Stories: Pavlov and his Dogs

Pavlov and his Dogs

07/06/2017

BBC Radio 4 - Science Stories, Pavlov and his Dogs

Naomi Alderman tells the story of Pavlov and his selectively drooling dogs.

Naomi Alderman discovers what Ivan Pavlov concluded from his experiments on dogs. Your Pavlovian response to this story of selective drooling is probably wrong.

Say Pavlov and most people think of bells ringing and dogs salivating. Ivan Pavlov is firmly associated in many people's minds with the idea that animals and, to some extent humans, automatically respond to certain stimuli. Internal thought processes are over-rated. But, as Naomi Alderman's story of selectively drooling dogs reveals, our Pavlovian response to Pavlov himself,is often wrong. For starters, he never used bells. Using metronomes and harmoniums, he noticed that dogs could distinguish between beats played at different speeds and identify individual notes from an A minor chord. He trained dogs to recognize precise time intervals: to expect food in precisely half an hour, for example. He wanted to understand how dogs learn and treated the brain as a black box because he had no way of getting inside it. He analysed what he could, principally the arrival of saliva; but he never thought free will was an illusion. In fact, he said "it would be stupid to reject the subjective world". 

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Science Stories

Pavlov and his Dogs

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4