Hills, Stephen; (2022) Pavlov's Dogs: Material Minds and the Novel in the Twentieth Century. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Text Stephen Hills, 13062929, PhD Thesis Final, Pavlov's Dogs.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 1 February 2026. Download (1MB)

Abstract

‘Pavlov’s Dogs: Material Minds and the Novel in the Twentieth Century’ explores the popular and intellectual responses to Ivan Pavlov’s science during the twentieth century, arguing that empirical knowledge of the brain undergirded both new, antiCartesian narrative forms and key twentieth-century debates about nationalism, psychology, cybernetics, linguistics, Marxism and postcolonialism. As the first major scientist to develop a method for studying the brain’s materiality, Pavlov was heralded as a transformative scientist when his work began to be published in English in 1927, set to be remembered with Einstein as one of the great figures of the twentieth century: the pioneering physicist of the universe aside the revolutionary physiologist of the brain. But his influence on a range of academic fields was largely written out of their histories after his name became associated with so-called brainwashing during the Cold War. Looking at Thomas Pynchon, I. A. Richards, Rebecca West, Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs and a coterie of British cyberneticists, Anthony Burgess, B. F. Skinner, Noam Chomsky, Frantz Fanon and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, among others, I uncover this forgotten influence, arguing that engagement with Pavlov’s neurophysiology prompted new conceptions of agency in an increasingly interconnected world.

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