New Lines of Development in The Physiology and Biology of Activeness: Essay No. 12

Journal of Russian & East European Psychology
ISSN: 1061-0405 (Print) 1558-0415 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrpo20
New Lines of Development in the Physiology and

Biology of Activeness: Essay No. 12
N.A. BERNSTEIN
To cite this article: N.A. BERNSTEIN (2006) New Lines of Development in the Physiology and
Biology of Activeness: Essay No. 12, Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 44:2, 68-92
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Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 44, no. 2,

March–April 2006, pp. 68–92.
© 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1061–0405/2006 $9.50 + 0.00.
N.A. BERNSTEIN
New Lines of Development

Downloaded by [New York University] at 19:52 03 April 2016
in the Physiology and Biology

of Activeness
Essay No. 12
Beginning roughly in the second quarter of our century, physiology has

entered a new phase or new period of its development, succeeding the
“classical” period. The entire path traveled by physiology over the
preceding century and worthy of the name “classical” was shaped by
spontaneous materialism. This worldview guided both the researchers
who were the glory of their time (they were too numerous even to enu-
merate the most prominent ones here) and the popularizers on whose
books the younger generations were brought up.
Spontaneous materialism fought many battles, both with the frank
obscurantists of fideism and with more sophisticated and dangerous op-
ponents from the vitalist camp. These battles helped to toughen up ma-
terialist views on the nature of the organism and of the processes that
occur within it and on the brain and thinking, turning them into a mighty
instrument of ideological struggle against all conceivable encroachments
by the supporters of idealist views.
English translation © 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text © 2004
Rossiiskaia Akademiia obrazovaniia, Moskovskii psikhologo-sotsial’nyi institut.
“Novye linii razvitiia v fiziologii i biologii aktivnosti,” in N.A. Bernshtein [Bernstein],
Biomekhanika i fiziologiia dvizhenii (Moscow and Voronezh: Rossiiskaia Akademiia
obrazovaniia, Moskovskii psikhologo-sotsial’nyi institut, 2004), pp. 481–512.
Translated by Stephen D. Shenfield.
68
04 new lines essay 12.pmd 68 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

MARCH–APRIL 2006 69
Russian science has the right to take pride in the fact that it has spawned
a brilliant galaxy of world-renowned physiologists, authors of very im-
portant investigations in all sections of physiology.
And if our era has opened up new horizons and prospects for physio-
logical thought, then it has been able to do so only because physiology
already possessed very important starting points in the treasure-house
of achievements of these leading lights of the classical period in the
science of life activity.
The entire history of positive knowledge leads us to an indisputable
conclusion. All branches of natural science, from the most ancient times
of Thales and Pythagoras up to our own day, owe their ceaseless progress
to the fact that each successive rung of scientific development found
within itself the strength mercilessly to overcome the preceding rung.
All historical examples, from the triumph of the heliocentric system
to the revolution in physics at the beginning of our century, teach us that
we must be able to combine all due reverence for the greatest scientists
of the preceding era with fearless rejection of the aspects of their legacy
that have outlived their formerly progressive role and may become (as
has happened many times) impediments to the further development of
science.
In natural science, as elsewhere, there are great figures, but there are
not and cannot be any unquestionable authorities.
Continuous development and unbroken development are not one and
the same thing. The history of each branch of natural science knows peri-
ods (sometimes very long ones) of tranquil and unbroken development
along established lines. But these periods of unbroken development from
time to time give way to dialectical leaps in development, to phases of
revolutionary replacement—sometimes stormy, sometimes gentler—of
established ideas and conceptions. An example is the sharp break in the
most fundamental concepts of physics that began with the works and
discoveries of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and their celebrated contemporar-
ies. These phases of dialectical negation and antithesis are no less marked
by continuity, in the sense of historical necessity and conditionality, than
the phases of tranquil and unbroken development. However, they reflect
the need, which has arisen for various reasons, for critical review of the
starting points of thinking characteristic of the period in the given sci-
ence that has drawn to a close.
All the great achievements of the physiology of the classical period
cannot hide the fact that, as a child of its time, it was on the whole a

product of mechanistic materialism. It is, undoubtedly, our obligation

both to make clear the defects inherent in mechanistic methodology in
natural science that were fully reflected in the views of the representa-
tives of the classical period of physiology and to set scientific physiol-
ogy on the firm rails of the materialist dialectic.
It is, so it appears, primarily in terms of the entire course of historical
development and the rise of new forms of production that we have to
explain the emergence both of those new lines of development in physi-
ology to which the present essay is devoted and of those very general
tasks of the organization of labor, which, after a number of spontaneous

attempts, led to the birth of scientific cybernetics. If cybernetics is un-
derstood as the general science of the control of complex systems of
information and communication (and this is exactly how it will be un-
derstood throughout the subsequent presentation), then it turns out that
a very large and important subset of the questions that face contempo-
rary physiology and have directed it onto new paths are closely related
to the more general theoretical tasks that scientific cybernetics was de-
veloped to solve.
Hence, it is understandable that cybernetics has found and continues
to find inspiring examples for itself in the new discoveries and findings
of physiology and that physiology (mainly our own Soviet physiology)
was able to formulate some of the most important cybernetic concepts
before the appearance of the first generalizing works of foreign cyber-
neticists. Due to the closeness and direct connection, discovered in one
way or another, between the pressing tasks of physiology and the prob-
lems on which cybernetics works, the latter is at present a most valuable
methodological instrument for physiological research. Such instruments,
correctly and skillfully used, include the range of concepts and terms
elaborated by cybernetics, the new branches of mathematics developed
under its stimulus, and, finally, the inexhaustibly rich technological re-
sources of electronics that it has proved possible in highly diverse forms
to place at the service of physiological research.
It is only necessary to emphasize again that it would be deeply erro-
neous to regard cybernetics as a definite doctrine with various merits
and defects that has been brought onto our soil. (Initially the attempt
was made in our country to treat this science in such a fashion.) This is
a science that can and must be placed on a correct methodological basis
and that is capable of bringing invaluable methodological benefit to bio-
logical science in general and to physiology in particular.

The latest period, covering roughly the last half century, has been a
time of profound and many-sided shifts that still continue; they concern
both objects of investigation and the whole theory and methodology of
physiological science. First of all, the physiology of the classical period
was, almost exclusively, the physiology of animals, with a gradual rise
in the position of the animals studied on the phylogenetic ladder (frog–
dove–cat–dog–macaque). For this reason it was weakly related to prac-
tice. In the latest period, by contrast, the specific weight of human
physiology has continually increased, as has the number of its practical
applications.
The striving, characteristic of the classical period, to study the func-
tions of organs and systems in states of rest (by means of decapitation,
anesthesia, and the immobilizing frame) has given way to the investiga-
tion of man in conditions of activity. Applied disciplines have arisen, such
as the physiology of labor, biomechanics, and occupational physiology.
This shift in interest in favor of active working states is especially evi-
dent in the increased attention devoted to motor functions—a branch of
physiology that with few exceptions was completely neglected through-
out the classical period.
Alongside these changes in the object of investigation, there has been
a deep and fundamental revision and reworking of the most basic con-
cepts of the preceding period.
The main emblem and leading principle of the classical period was
the reflex arc. The positive methodological features of this principle
were fully appraised: the possibility of all-encompassing materialist
determinism and the clarity with which the basic task was set—to find
law-conforming input–output interrelations between the organism and
its environment, to formulate transmission functions, and, finally, to
interpret the organism in clear-cut fashion as a highly organized reac-
tive machine.
The atomism characteristic of mechanistic materialism and the rigid
certainty that the whole is always the sum of its component parts and
nothing more made it easy to tolerate many simplifying constructions
that have since collapsed under the onslaught of new facts and con-
temporary methodology. The acceptance of atomistic views made it pos-
sible to regard the integral organism as an aggregate of cells (as in the
conceptions of Bichat or Virchow), and its behavior and life activity as
similar aggregates or chains of reflexes. The spontaneous materialists
underestimated the decisively important factor of the coherent and sys-

temic character of the organism and of its functions. Their views were
incompatible with an understanding of the fact that a reflex is not an
element of an action, but an elementary action that occupies one or an-
other place in the rank order of complexity and significance of all the
actions of the organism.
The now established universal fact of the regulation and monitoring
of all the functions of the organism in accordance with the principle of
feedback forces us to recognize the necessity of replacing the concept of
the reflex arc, open-ended at the periphery, by that of the reflex ring1
with an uninterrupted participating flow of afferent signalization serv-

ing monitoring or adjustment purposes. By all accounts, ring-wise clo-
sure of this type occurs even in the most elementary kinds of reflex
reactions of the organism, but may escape attention due to the brief and
elementary nature of these reactions. Thus, we have to regard the re-
flex arc as a first approximation to the actual picture of the basic type
of neural process—an approximation that was very significant in its
time, but has now played out its progressive role.
The very important and fundamental significance of the transition
from the structural diagram of the arc to that of the ring is not confined
to recognition of the enormous importance of monitoring-adjustment
afferentation2 in each case of ordered reacting. In place of an atomized
chain of elementary reflexes, connected by nothing except the succes-
sive order of the so-called dynamic stereotype and stage-by-stage “sanc-
tioning” signalization, the contemporary physiological view posits an
uninterrupted cyclical process of interaction with the variable conditions
of the external or internal environment that unfolds and continues as an
integral act until it is in essence completed.
This conception makes it possible to bring closer together two broad
groups of physiological processes—efferent and receptor processes. In
the latter we can now clearly trace the ring-wise type of connection
between efferent and afferent neural impulses. It is precisely the ring-
wise connection that explains the invariably active character of all kinds
of receptor processes. The external sense organs of all modalities are
equipped with musculature, both smooth and striated, which takes part
in tuning-adaptive changes in these organs. The process of perception
itself does not occur as a passive imprinting (with repetitions to enhance
the stimulant affect, as though Talbot’s law were applicable in this con-
text), but is an active process from start to finish. I shall return to this
point below.

The decisive importance of the ring structure of processes for the

control of motor acts can already be considered a matter of general knowl-
edge. Here we need recall only that the entire character of the work of
receptors and sensory syntheses in their performance of monitoring-
adjustment functions in the ring-wise process of control of motor acts
has turned out, according to contemporary data, to be profoundly differ-
ent from the functioning of these same receptors in their signaling-trig-
gering role.3 From the position of the open-ended reflex arc, it was
possible to notice and take into account only the second of the aforemen-
tioned forms of functioning—namely, the reception of unconditioned or

conditioned stimuli of reaction. This left outside the field of vision the
profoundly important forms of the functioning of receptors as inseparable
participants in the ring-wise processes of interaction with the external
world.
I have already referred above to Virchow’s cellular mosaic and the
treatment of complex meaning-oriented motor acts as a chain constructed
out of elementary reflex-blocks. But the same principle of “mosaic”
juxtaposition was used in the period under consideration much more
widely than this. Following the discovery in the cerebral cortex of pri-
mary projections of sensory and sensory-motor fields, it became obvi-
ous that it was necessary, alongside these projections that transmit all
current sensory information to the brain, to make allowance for zones to
which impressions are transmitted and where they take shape for pro-
longed storage in memory.
This necessity led to the creation of a fundamental schema of the
functioning of the brain, worked out in very great detail and called cell
centrism (S.S. Korsakov, I.P. Pavlov, V.M. Bekhterev, and others). This
conjectural schema was based on two ideas: (a) the idea of initially
vacant cells, each of which at some subsequent moment of life was
filled with microelements of information conveyed from the sense or-
gans; and (b) the idea of the projection onto these cellular fields of
complex perceptions from the external world in accordance with the
simplest principles of element-by-element correlation between the set
of elements of the world picture and the set of cells that receive and
store these elements.
This conception made it possible to treat the sum total of sensory
experience accumulated in the course of life as a collection or aggregate
of elements of this sensory experience in their signaling role imprinted
in memory cells. (Recall that this was the only role of receptors known

to the adepts of the reflex arc.) With full consistency, the same principle
of mosaic juxtaposition presented the linguistic system, highly complex
in its structure and in the profound uniqueness of the relations between
thought and word, as another collection of elements—a glossary dis-
tributed among cortical cells of the same kind as those described above.
This interpretation of language (in particular, of speech) as a signal-
ing system reflects, besides the basic methodological error of the prin-
ciple of mosaic juxtaposition, another peculiar oversight on the part of
its authors. Genetically, the speech function developed, apparently, in
two stages: the stage of meaning-bearing signals of sound or gesture,

and the stage of the formation of a system of signs as a tool for repre-
senting and comprehending the world.
This division into two distinct temporal stages in phylogenesis is best
confirmed by two circumstances. First, numerous facts have now been
amassed regarding the presence of meaning-bearing signals of both kinds
(sounds and gestures) in a number of animals, both vertebrates (mammals
and birds) and insects (bees, grasshoppers, etc.). Second, it is striking that
many animals—and by no means the “highest”—can readily be trained to
respond to phonemic code signals, which operate in this case just as other
conditioned stimuli (a light, a bell, a comb, etc.). What distinguishes the
speech system of man from this very ancient capability of animals is pre-
cisely what raises it above the signaling level to a qualitatively higher
level. Its signaling function is not, of course, removed, but it is assigned
merely a specific and least significant place in the system as a whole.
The highly developed speech system of man is analogous to math-
ematical algebra. (Perhaps it is this that created the possibility of its
further formalization in the “logical algebra” of Boole and others.) That
this analogy does not strike us right away is, apparently, only a conse-
quence of our being accustomed to the use of speech. Characteristic of
mathematical algebra is the presence of conventional sign-symbols (let-
ters usually serve as such) and operator-based symbols that designate
the functional relations between the former and the operations that have
to be conducted on them.
The same is observed in the structured speech that is inherent in man.
Its nominative symbols (names, designations of qualities, participial
forms, and so on) are conventional phonemes and graphemes that desig-
nate different contents within the thinking process. Alongside them there
is a rich lexicon of operator-words or etymological characteristics that
create meaning-related functional relations among the former and trans-

form speech as a glossary into speech as a tool for knowing the world
and acting in it.
In themselves, these operator-words (not, under, for, or, really, etc.)
and etymological operators (copulas, suffixes, case endings, etc.) repre-
sent nothing and bear no object-related load, just like the signs “plus,”
“minus,” “root,” and so on in algebra. But it was, perhaps, precisely
these operator-words and the ideas corresponding to them that were the
greatest discovery at the dawn of human reason. They are, at any rate,
immeasurably more important than the nominator-words that for some
reason remain the sole representatives of speech in the glossaries relied

upon by the adepts of a second signal system.
The oversight outlined above was cruelly avenged. Those who worked
out the principles and devices of machine translation had to tackle the
tasks and difficulties that arose from scratch, almost in a vacuum, and
the theory of the second signal system, already with over thirty years of
work behind it, was of no help to them. Undoubtedly, a genuinely physi-
ological theory of language, true to reality, should have been a basic
foundation for the creation and programming of machine translators.
There should be no doubt that throughout the classical period attempts
at the physiological interpretation of the functions of perception and
language as substantially material brain processes (attempts facilitated
by tolerance for mosaic juxtaposition, which substituted itself for real
synthesis) were progressive. However, their critical review has now be-
come necessary and inevitable. The methodological fallacy of mosaic
juxtaposition in all its forms and manifestations is already obvious to
us. The onslaught of new facts and findings now forces us to conclude
that the previous conceptions and hypotheses concerning the structure
of brain processes, like the principle of the reflex arc, have outlived their
role as first approximations. I have given a more detailed analysis of
mosaic juxtaposition and of contemporary ideas regarding the principles
of brain projection in another work.4
It is now time for a brief survey of new lines in the development of
physiology.
The physiology of man under conditions of labor activity has suc-
ceeded in undergoing important changes in direct connection with the
evolution of forms of production. With the steady decline in the specific
weight of crudely physical labor, applied physiology—starting with the
ergonomics of labor, biomechanics, the protection and hygiene of physi-
cal labor, and so on—has begun to switch over to the tasks of intellectu-

alized labor in the man–machine complex, the rationalization of control

and communication and of the distribution of functions, and so on. These
are precisely the tasks where it has proved so valuable to call on the aid
of the methods of cybernetics and the entire range of its concepts. An-
other very important branch of contemporary applied psychophysiol-
ogy is, indisputably, the study of labor in conditions requiring from man
the highest concentration of his attention, resourcefulness, will, and so
on (such as space flight, high-speed air flight, work at great heights
aboveground, work underwater, and demolition work).
In the field of theoretical physiology, all the branches that have

emerged in the most recent period may be named and are worthy of
examination. One of them—the physiology of regulative processes—
was the peer, and to a certain extent the precursor, of cybernetics. A
second, the physiology of activeness, is arising and taking shape before
our eyes. It is expedient to begin the survey of these branches with the
problematic of activeness.
The clearer the principle of the ring-wise regulation of vital processes
became, the greater the extent to which the activeness inseparably con-
nected with it was detected. This is not to mention the forms and mani-
festations of activeness in the most direct sense—the motor functions.
The active form and structure of all processes of the reception and cen-
tral processing of information are now beyond doubt. Our time has fully
confirmed the thesis of I.M. Sechenov to the effect that “we listen and
not hear, look and not only see.” All the chief kinds of our peripheral
receptors are equipped, as I have already shown, with efferent innerva-
tion, to which we may attribute both functions of optimal tuning (in a
very broad sense) and innumerable manifestations of search, induction,
monitoring, haptic exploration, and so on. Here too belong all kinds and
manifestations of “verification through practice,” both of concrete re-
ceptor impulses and of the entire adjustment of the sense organs, and
cross-verification and synthesis of the evidence of different receptors
by way of the organization of sensory syntheses. Finally, the processes
of selecting the necessary minimum of information, sifting out super-
fluous “noise,” are themselves active.
The deep significance of active forms of functioning has, perhaps, re-
vealed itself most strikingly in the field of the central brain processes
connected with the construction in the brain of an ordered and dynamic
model of the external world. The views of cell centrism were inseparable
from the idea of the passive character of the reception and imprinting of

sensory information arriving in the brain by initially vacant cells pre-

destined for this purpose. Contemporary psychophysiological thinking,
by contrast, inclines toward an understanding of the cognitive process
as active modeling, fundamentally different from the mechanistic “ele-
ment to element” correlation. Also active are the choice of a principle
for ordering perceived sets, the internal classification of identified sub-
sets, and the control of haptic processes in the broadest sense—that is,
of the processes of active reception that were discussed above.
But the roots of the principle of the activeness of living organisms go
much deeper, giving it the features of a very important general biologi-

cal factor. It will be appropriate to start with motor functions.
Motor functions are a basic group of processes in which the organism
does not simply interact with the surrounding world, but actively influ-
ences it, changing it in a fashion corresponding to its needs. From this
proposition flows the following.
If we analyze the basis motor on which actions are formed, then it
turns out that each important act is a solution (or an attempt at a solu-
tion) to a specific action task. But an action task—in other words, a
result—that the organism strives to achieve is something that must come
to pass but does not yet exist. Thus, an action task is a representation or
model, coded somehow or other in the brain, of a required future. Obvi-
ously, a vitally useful or important action can be neither programmed
nor executed unless the brain has created a guiding precondition for this
in the form of what is now called a model of the required future.
By all accounts, we have before us two connected processes. One of
them is probabilistic forecasting on the basis of the perceived current
situation, a kind of extrapolation over some interval of future time. Fac-
tual data and observations that point to such processes are already being
accumulated by neurophysiologists and clinicians.5
Alongside this probabilistic extrapolation of the course of surround-
ing events (as it would be in case of “noninterference”), there takes
place a process of programming of the action that should lead to real-
ization of the required future, the model of which was discussed above.
Such programming of a simple or chain action now looks like a kind
of interpolation between the existing situation and what it must be-
come in the interests of the given individual. I shall not dwell here on
the fact that both the programming and the execution of an action are
usually accomplished under urgent time pressure—that is, under con-
ditions of inner conflict between the urgency of prognostication and

its precision. Nor shall I dwell on the quite obvious circumstance that
the actual execution of an action inevitably takes place as a struggle
against or active conquest of changing external obstacles, whatever they
may be (uncontrollable external forces of resistance, counteraction by
an adversary, unexpectedness, etc.).
In this connection, it is worth noting that recognition of the reality of
a brain-coded model or extrapolation of a probable future and of the
representation in the brain of action tasks as formulas of a required fu-
ture makes possible a strictly materialist interpretation of such concepts
as goal-directedness, goal-conformity, and so on.

Indeed, in the preceding period of the development of scientific physi-
ology, facts that are now established—such as coded representations of
information, primary or recombined by the brain—were completely un-
known. It was therefore believed that most concepts such as the task or
goal of an action—that is, the program code aimed at optimizing vari-
ous conditions of existence of the organism—belong inseparably to psy-
chology and pertain to a highly developed consciousness capable of
formulating for itself successive action tasks and goals. Thus, the mate-
rialist platform faced an alternative: either to admit the presence of mind
and consciousness in the earthworm or in the tree (this, of course, was
rejected as absurd) or to consider that none of the concepts in the cat-
egory under discussion are applicable to most organisms. The only philo-
sophical tendency that felt unconstrained in this field was idealist vitalism,
the unsubstantiated hypotheses of which allowed one to go as far as one
liked in the direction of finalism.
It is precisely the discovery of the possibility of the organism con-
structing and combining the material codes that represent all of the in-
numerable forms of activeness and of extrapolation of the future, starting
with tropisms and ending with the most complex forms of directed in-
fluence on its surroundings, that enables us now to speak of the goal-
directedness of any organism (even, perhaps, the protozoon) without the
least risk of sliding toward finalism. The findings now accumulating in
the field of comparative physiology point to a hitherto unsuspected di-
versity of material substrata of regulating codes and of the very forms
and principles of coding. The apprehended and verbalized mental codes
of the human brain are only one special form of such codes, albeit one
of the most highly developed.
To the question of the modeling of the future and the programming

of action aimed at the optimization of this future, examined here in its

most critical features, it will be appropriate to add two remarks.
Standing on positions of the monopoly of the reflex arc and confining
its attention to strictly reactive processes, the physiology of the classical
period was able by means of a very small degree of schematization to
regard the efferent processes of the organism as strictly (and in the ma-
jority of cases univalently) determined by the signals arriving along the
afferent semi-arc. Now, when facts compel us to regard all manifesta-
tions of the interaction of the organism with the world, and especially of
its active influence on the world, as cyclical processes organized in

accordance with the principle of the reflex ring, our assessment of the
relationships existing here changes in its very essence. Unlike the open-
ended arc, a ring-wise process can with equal ease be started from any
point on the ring. This unites into a single general class processes of
interaction that are reactive in the old sense (that is, starting from the
afferent semi-ring) and so-called spontaneous interactive processes (that
is, starting from the efferent semi-ring).
As I have already mentioned, in a number of respects it is precisely
the latter subclass that includes the most vitally important manifestations
of activeness. The essential point is that in all like cases the organism
does not simply react to a situation or to an element bearing a meaning-
ful signal, but runs up against a situation that is undergoing dynamic
change and therefore places it before the necessity of probabilistic fore-
cast, followed by a choice.
It will be even more precise to say that not an action but the taking of
a decision concerning an action is the reaction of the organism and of its
higher control systems to the situation. The profound difference between
the two emerges more and more clearly in the contemporary physiology
of activeness.
Permitting myself a metaphor, I can say that the organism constantly
plays a game with its natural environment—a game in which the rules
are not defined and the moves “thought up” by the adversary are not
known. This peculiarity of really existing relations essentially distin-
guishes the living organism from a reactive machine of any degree of
precision and complexity. Subsequently I shall note that reactive mecha-
nisms play a role of no small importance as technical components of
the adaptive regulation of actions, but never as direct determinants of
behavior.

Perhaps it is precisely for this reason that it is not difficult to con-

struct a reactive model capable of executing and forming both uncondi-
tioned and conditioned reflexes (for example, the models of Walter). But
the creation of a model that effects (or improves) the choice of optimal
behavior under conditions of purely probabilistic information about the
“moves of the adversary” presents difficulties that cybernetics has hardly
begun to overcome.
The new ideas now being outlined about the principles of active behav-
ior have something in common, on the one hand, with findings concern-
ing the physiological mechanisms of the automation and de-automation

of motor acts,6 and, on the other hand, with the new mathematical models
of hierarchical coordination relations proposed by I.M. Gelfand, V.S.
Gurfinkel, and M.L. Tsetlin.7 There are many grounds for thinking that
the higher control instrument of the central nervous system does not
command in detail the entire process of a movement of a given segment
of the peripheral motor apparatus, but merely determines the “matrix”
of control and adjustment within which the “center” subordinate to it
works with a significant measure of independence.
In this situation, the principles of which are well known from the
general theory of automatic regulation, it falls to the higher “center” to
perform tasks such as assigning a definite regime in the broadest sense
of this term, monitoring it, and switching and adapting it to the defining
features of the situation and of the task at hand. In cases of accident,
when the lower “center” of the segment transmits up the rising afferent
line a kind of alarm signal regarding its inability to cope with the situa-
tion that has been created by its own means within the bounds of the
matrix variants available to it, the higher apparatus substantially repro-
grams the whole strategy of the action being performed.
According to a long established general rule, in a movement with a
multilevel hierarchy of control and adjustment it is only afferent signals
and adjustment commands generated by them at the highest, “leading”
level of the given movement that fall into the field of consciousness.
The gradual transfer of coordination adjustments of technical signifi-
cance to the control of lower, subordinate coordination levels and of the
corresponding sensory syntheses, accompanied by the departure of
these adjustments from the field of consciousness, is a long and well-
known phenomenon of automation.
This phenomenon and the opposite phenomenon of de-automation as
a result of various disorganizing external or internal causes, both known

so far to physiologists only from their description, now find a model for
themselves in the form of the hierarchy outlined above, consisting of a
lower instrument that possesses significant autonomy in playing the
“game” and a higher command post that guides it. Consistent with such
a model, naturally, is the fact that the ring-wise processes of lower ma-
trix control do not reach the higher levels of consciousness precisely
because they are granted a large measure of independence. These lower
instruments, evidently, also have access to the adoption of urgent tacti-
cal decisions in situations that leave no time for “calling in” higher cen-
ters along the corresponding interlevel coordination ring.

The progressive and valuable character of the design of the model un-
der discussion lies not in the conjecture that the standard and “penalty”
for the activeness of a lower device is precisely the afferentation flowing
to it (for the physiologist this is at least arguable), but in the formulation
of the model itself, which is readily accessible for experimental verifica-
tion and brings us substantially closer to understanding the coordination
mechanisms of the active motor behavior of the organism.
The second remark that it is appropriate to make here pertains to the
question of the purely physiological, objective manifestations of the
“modeling of the future” that increasingly reveals itself as a necessary
precondition of goal-directed activeness. It needs to be said that a con-
siderable number of observations dating from the classical period of
physiology and belonging, as it then appeared, to very diverse types of
phenomena are now starting to cohere into a single harmonious system
of central control processes. This system includes, first of all, the tuning
processes of excitation and synaptic conductivity that were already ob-
served by Sherrington as central-excitatory and central-inhibitory spi-
nal states and that he placed in indubitable connection with the reciprocal
regulation of muscle-antagonists.
Taking the part for the whole, Lapicque saw in the phenomena of the
centrally regulated synchronism and heterochronism of nerve-muscle
plates a kind of anticipatory “switching of points” for the correct selective
addressing of efferent impulses to the muscles.
A.A. Ukhtomskii and his followers envisioned an analogous orienting-
regulating role for neural rhythms, their assimilation and tuning. Finally,
in the broad range of phenomena of nerve-muscle tonus it was impos-
sible not to notice the manifestations of a kind of preliminary, advance
tuning of the musculature.
On the other hand, improvements in the technology of electromy-

ography and electroneurography are continually expanding the range of

experiments that reveal to us the nerve-muscle dynamic of the so-called
orientation [ustanovka]. The latter is, again, none other than the same
centrally controlled processes of pretuning of the nerve-muscle periph-
ery, viewed in a new aspect and by means of a different technology.
Everything points to the fact that in each motor act that takes the form of
an uninterrupted ring-wise process afferent information about this act
simultaneously mobilizes central tuning systems, the functioning of
which keeps ahead, as it were, of the actual execution of each phase of
the movement by some interval of time.
***
Biology has now arrived at concepts of the organism that in many re-
spects differ profoundly from the formulations of the classical period,
which treated the organism as a reactively self-equilibrating or self-regulat-
ing system. The organism is now regarded as an organization character-
ized by the following two chief defining properties.
First, it is an organization that preserves its systemic identity with
itself despite a continual flow of both energy and matter of the substra-
tum passing through it. Although no individual atom in the organism is
retained in the composition of its cells for more than a comparatively
short time (with a few exceptions such as, for instance, the calcites of
the bones), the organism remains the same today as it was yesterday and
its life activity today is conditioned by its entire preceding life.
Second, and for all that, at all phases and stages of its existence the
organism undergoes uninterrupted and directed change. This directed-
ness of ontogenetic evolution is proved beyond dispute if only by the
fact that a thousand representatives of a single animal or plant species
develop into individuals that are identical in all their basic or defining
characteristics, even though different individuals are subjected to some-
times widely variant external conditions of life. As for embryogenesis,
today we already know the bearers of hereditary characteristics, their
chemical structure, and the code alphabet through the mediation of which
the organism, starting as a fertilized egg, possesses a coded model of its
future development and formation and a coded program for the succes-
sive phases of this development.8
The identity noted above in the results of morphogenetic develop-
ment against the background of variable conditions bears witness to the

fact that the organism actively overcomes possible and inevitable exter-
nal obstacles on the path of the program of its morphogenesis. Experi-
mental factors of injuries and partial amputations (for example, of the
kidneys or extremities) in embryogenesis—amputations that do not
prevent these organs from developing into full-fledged extremities, cases
of anatomical or even functional regeneration, clinical data—all this
shows that the organism as a whole and, quite possibly, each of its cells
actively struggle for their formation, development, and propagation. The
process of life is not “equilibration with the environment,” as the think-
ers of the period of classical mechanicism9 understood it, but the con-
quest of this environment, aimed at the maintenance of status or
homeostasis and at movement in the direction of the species program of
development and self-provision.
Thus, what in the special case of the motor functions of animal or-
ganisms looks like modeling of a required future in the form of an ac-
tion task and as the realization of the interpolated program of this action
by overcoming external obstacles and actively fighting for the result
turns out to be a manifestation of a general principle of activeness that
penetrates deeply into biology. This principle manifests itself both in the
processes of growth and development of animals and plants and in their
struggle for the realization of everything that they need and require.
Here there arises one extraordinarily interesting question that encom-
passes, apparently, the entire field of biology. It is connected closely
with both the theoretical principles of biological modeling and the facts
described above concerning the directed evolution of the individual.
I shall begin with a number of parallels between externally extremely
diverse groups of processes, in order to formulate what they have in
common.
On an oak or maple tree there are several thousand leaves. It is noto-
rious that among them you will not find two that are congruent: all con-
ceivable metric indicators for them display wide variability. Nevertheless,
we can say that according to certain indicators that willy-nilly have to
be called essential, there is no doubt whatsoever regarding whether any
given leaf belongs to an oak or a maple.
A person performs repeated habitual movements. He may, for ex-
ample, write on paper or chalk large on a vertical board (as experiments
have shown) with his feet or mouth, and we shall not find even one pair
of congruent inscriptions. In all these cases, however, his individual hand-
writing style is preserved throughout. A savings bank freely gives a cus-

tomer money on his signature, although we can be sure that it is congru-

ent neither with the model signature in the bank’s records nor with his
own repeat signatures. Chronocyclograms of all conceivable cyclical
habitual movements confirm the same for the trajectories of individual
cycles. Our intuitive perception, not backed up by precise formulation,
has created various concepts analogous to that of handwriting style, such
as gait, touch (on the piano), timbre of voice, and accent.
The same distinction is applicable to all these cases: there is an es-
sential similarity (that is, equality) with regard to one subset of avail-
able indicators, while another subset, usually of metric indicators,

displays an absence of congruence and a variable distribution. Other
examples in the same category are recognition of configurations, above
all of letters, in all sizes, scripts, and so on (curiously, this is just as easy
for white letters on a black background as it is for black letters on a
white background), recognition of a person’s face with six degrees of
freedom of projective changes of its representation on the retina, and
recognition of a given specimen as belonging to one or another species
or class of animal. These last few examples pertain to what psycholo-
gists have long designated by the term “generalization.” But this leaves
unexplained both the mechanisms of this process (which, undoubtedly,
belongs to the category of processes of brain modeling), and, most im-
portant, the principles by which the brain is guided in dividing the indi-
cators of an object into the two contrasting “essential” and “inessential”
subsets.
The use and further elaboration of the mathematical idea put forward
by Gelfand and Tsetlin appear to hold great promise. This idea consists
in applying to the questions under consideration the class of functions
of a large number of variables designated by the authors as “well-orga-
nized functions.”10 A function is well organized if, first, its arguments
can be classified into “essential” and “inessential” variables and if, sec-
ond, the allocation of arguments to the two subclasses is stable. The
authors do not give a rigorous definition of each subclass, but confine
themselves to a striking characteristic. Inessential variables may condi-
tion sharp changes and jumps in the function, steep gradients in values,
and so on. At the same time, they justify the name given them by not
having a decisive effect on the behavior of the function as a whole and
over long intervals, on the location of extrema, and so forth.
Over short intervals the influence of essential variables may be masked

to a considerable extent by the interference of a strongly variant effect

of inessential variables, but the resultant form and behavior of the func-
tion are determined primarily by the essential variables. Apparently, the
allocation of an argument to one subclass or the other is determined not
so much by the concrete physicochemical or other process on which it
is based as by the very form of the functional link between the given
argument and the function being described.
It is extremely tempting to resort to the class of functions described,
representing each aspect of the development and life activity of living
organisms by means of such a function of many variables. Here the

subclasses of essential and inessential variables are superimposed di-
rectly on the above-defined subsets of essential and inessential indica-
tors, respectively. Thus, for example, applied to the morphogenesis of
some leaf or flower it will be possible to say that defining species char-
acteristics, clearly coded in the chromosomes, are realized as the prod-
uct of essential variables (in the Gelfand-Tsetlin sense), while metric
indicators that display wide variability are realized as a result of the
influence of inessential variables. The same method would be appro-
priate in relation to the coordination of movements—for instance, in
relation to cyclical habitual acts like writing, the subdivision of the char-
acteristics of which has already been discussed above. A fully analo-
gous organization of defining variables occurs in acts of perception, above
all in the perception of form but also in all conceivable acts of generali-
zation; this points to the fact that these remarkable functions resemble
active brain modeling during the processes of perceiving and reflecting
the world.
The very first attempts to apply these functions to represent mecha-
nisms of life activity will enable us to add important and promising
features to their current characterization. I have already noted above
how the organism relates in different ways to the influence of the envi-
ronment on it, depending on whether its essential or its inessential vari-
ables are affected. If only inessential variables are affected, it is reactive
and, so to speak, “yieldingly” adaptive. One leaf of a tree receives more
nourishment than another and grows larger; it is exposed to more sun-
light, it acquires a higher concentration of chlorophyll, and so forth.
But the organism does not yield any essential properties of its struc-
ture and form (like those that, for instance, define the diagram of a flower)
without the application to it of very profound violence. Nor does it re-

treat in the face of a negative geotropism—that is, under no conditions

does it renounce the struggle for the vertical orientation of its trunk or
stalk. Thus, we may say that the organism is reactive in relation to its
inessential variables but highly nonreactive or active in relation to its
essential variables.
Structural analysis of motor acts and of their coordination gives ex-
actly the same picture. As my own investigations showed in their time
and as I have already mentioned above, the coordinating control of each
integral, meaning-oriented motor act is constructed as a hierarchical mul-
tilevel system of rings of control and adjustment. The need for such a
multiplicity of levels arises both from the very large number of degrees
of freedom possessed by our multilink motor organs and from the enor-
mous number of muscle units that actively participate in maintaining
posture and in accomplishing the required body movement.
Here we must also take into account attendant facts regarding the
elastic extensibility of the muscles and the complex reactive dynamic
of the motor organs. To all this, of course, must be added the entirety of
those uncontrollable, and therefore also unforeseeable, external forces
of resistance the goal-conforming conquest of which constitutes the very
essence of the overwhelming majority of our voluntary motor acts. In
the process of coordinating control of a movement, the numerous kinds
and qualities of ring-wise adjustments are distributed among brain sys-
tems at different levels in accordance with two sets of factors. On the
one hand, the distribution depends on the composition and quality of the
sensory syntheses inherent in those systems. On the other hand, it reflects
the specific weight and significance in terms of meaning of various ad-
justments for the full-fledged realization of the program of the move-
ment.
Strict standardization of the form and metric of cyclical habitual move-
ments is never realized automatically. Nor is it ever a goal in itself.11 It
has to be specially developed, and the brain undertakes this task only in
those cases or in those details or links of the motor act where such stan-
dardization is essential. Hence that metric variability of movements that
I have already described above. But most worthy of attention from the
perspective of our present discussion are two points concerning “lower”
adjustments—that is, adjustments of a purely technical character and
secondary meaning-related significance. First, such adjustments are ob-
served in those details and aspects of a movement where there is the great-
est variability; second, they have a clearly marked reactive character.

It may be said that the apparatus for the control of movements dis-
plays two different coordination tactics. In relation to secondary and
technical discrepancies and hindrances it acts in a reactive-adaptive fash-
ion, not fearing variability, but in relation to programmatically essential
aspects of control, it fights for the required result at all costs, actively
overcoming obstacles, and, if need be, reprogramming itself on the go.
I shall deal only briefly here with another question that is now com-
ing to a head and is also closely connected with the field of “well-orga-
nized” Gelfand-Tsetlin functions. This is the question of the mutual
relations between biological systems and the concept or class of dis-

crete numbers. The indicators, arguments, adjustment functions, and so
on that belong to the “inessential” category are clearly continuous and
form corresponding distributions. But how does the matter stand with
essential variables? In particular, is it permissible to pose the question
in relation to features that are subject to hereditary transmission and
coded in the chromosomes: up to what limit is the apparatus under dis-
cussion “able” to count?
This question is now raised in the most diverse works. Judging, for
instance, by anatomical and comparative-anatomical data, such a confi-
dent “count” continues roughly up to 26 (number of teeth, vertebrae,
cytoarchitectonic fields of the brain, elements on the lateral line of a
fish, etc.). It is certainly inconceivable that, for instance, the number of
hairs on the head or the number of cells in the cerebral cortex should be
coded in the genetic apparatus.
Of greatest fundamental interest, undoubtedly, are the boundary fields
of the integer series. The cyto- and myeloarchitectonic fields of the ce-
rebral cortex in man are “numbered” and standard. But up to what limit
does this numbering extend and at what point does randomization of the
number of cells and of the plan of their synaptic interconnections start?
Are the numbers of glomeruli in the kidney, of islets of Langerhans, of
Pacini corpuscles, or of muscle units in one or another muscle num-
bered or random? How does the apparatus of hereditary transmission
behave when numbers in the hundreds are reached? In other words, where
is the boundary of its information capacity?
From the point of view of the discussion here, the following theme is
important. The information capacity of the genetic apparatus, of course,
is not imposed on it somehow from without, but expresses the evolu-
tionarily determined requirement of the given species of animal, plant,
cell, and so on. Therefore, an analysis of the aforementioned boundary

relations in the field of transition from the determinate to the random is

simultaneously an analysis of the distribution between essential and in-
essential arguments that corresponds to the evolutionarily determined
requirement of the organism. At the same time, it is an analysis of where
and how the organism draws the boundary between active and reactive
processes, between number and plurality (discrete or continuous), and,
finally, between the field of application of the theory of well-organized
functions and that of the theory of random processes.
In conclusion, it is necessary to dwell further on one question of fun-
damental importance.
From the very birth of scientific cybernetics, as soon as the close
connection between the key problems facing physiology and the tasks
conditioning the demarcation of cybernetics as an independent science
became clear, the two sciences began to fertilize one another with fac-
tual data and theoretical formulations and generalizations. The entire
period from the publication of Wiener’s first work up to the present day
is permeated with the search for and use of analogies between living and
artificial systems. These analogies have helped physiologists to com-
prehend systemic interrelations within the organism, and have given tech-
nologists new and valuable ideas for the construction of automatons.
Whether or not this “honeymoon” of the discovery and practical ap-
plication of analogies and similarities has come to an end, in the most
recent period, questions of the opposite orientation have increasingly
been creeping into the literature. Does there exist, all the same, a funda-
mental difference between living and nonliving systems? And if there is
such a difference, then where does the boundary lie between the two?
Of course, this is not a matter of trivial differences like differences in
construction material or the quantitative differences that make it un-
thinkable for contemporary technology to imitate the 15 billion cells of
the cerebrum. At the same time, it is indisputable that, under all condi-
tions, the sought-for difference must be formulated on the basis of the
strict materialist unity of the laws to which living and nonliving matter
are equally subject.
It is becoming extremely plausible to suppose that the sought-for
watershed either directly consists of the general biological principle of
activeness or at least contains this principle as a very important compo-
nent. In support of this judgment it may be pointed out that it is pre-
cisely the active forms of morphogenesis, of the development of

individual behavior, of prognostication of the future, and so on that are

most inaccessible to modeling, at least in the mind. It may also be sup-
ported by the universality with which this principle of directed, con-
quering activeness manifests itself in all forms of life activity.
However, before deciding to put forward this conception of biologi-
cal activeness as a working hypothesis, it is necessary to answer, even if,
for the time being, only in the most general way, the question of whether
it is possible to speak of any profound specificity of life processes without
departing from strictly materialist positions and slipping into one of the
forms of vitalism, albeit camouflaged.

In the eighteenth century, when militant mechanistic materialism first
firmly defined its scientific positions, there arose before natural science
an alternative that seemed at that time (and for a long time thereafter)
inevitable. On the one hand, the contrast between the manifestations of
life activity and the processes that were then known in nonliving nature
was so striking that it was necessary to look for ways to explain and
substantiate it. On the other hand, the stock of knowledge of deep physi-
cal and chemical processes, and especially of biophysical and biochemi-
cal laws at the molecular level, was still extremely scanty. So things
turned out as follows. Those who went over to the idealist camp and
readily admitted ideas about all kinds of nonmaterial factors and es-
sences, failing to find in the existing knowledge of physics and chemis-
try anything capable of explaining the specificity of life, posited for this
purpose a nonmaterial vital force; this quite suited them. For their part,
consistent materialists had no choice but to reject all attempts to explain
the specificity of life, inasmuch as the physics and chemistry of that
period were unable to suggest any such explanation.
This traditional idea that it is wrong even to pose the question of the
specificity of vital processes in a strictly material plane and interpreta-
tion has survived right up to the present day, when an enormous quantity
of new evidence and facts has piled up. These new facts, however,
enable us to examine many processes (above all at the cellular and
molecular levels) in a way that was simply inconceivable in the past
century. They make it possible to place on the agenda the question of
reconsidering the traditional view. Neither the scope of the present article
nor my own competence permits me to discuss the question in any
detail, but I must at least show what may be involved here.
In the past there was only the most rudimentary evidence concern-

ing the action of enzymes. The range of processes known to involve

enzymes is now continually expanding. The role of enzymes in the
guided synthesis of macromolecular compounds and in the reduplica-
tion of these compounds is becoming clear. So, for example, are the
enormous diversity and peculiarity of the chemo-autotrophic micro-
organisms that facilitate intensive processes whose simulation in labo-
ratory conditions would require extremely high temperatures and
pressures.
In the past century nothing was known about stochastic processes (if
we do not count the kinetic theory of gases and solutions). With respect
to the second law of thermodynamics, scientists knew of and studied
such micro-level phenomena as fluctuation (M. Smolukhovskii) and
Brownian motion (A. Einstein). However, it was still impossible to say
anything about anti-entropic processes in open systems or the condi-
tions for their occurrence and controllability, while now each year adds
new facts in this area.
I have already discussed biological codes and their role in structuring
and self-organization. I shall not continue this enumeration. Its purpose
was merely to show that extensive systems of new facts have now accu-
mulated. Researchers will, undoubtedly, find among these systems points
of support for applying the newly discovered laws of biochemistry,
biophysics, and new branches of mathematics to the unreservedly ma-
terialist description of the specific manifestations of life. They will be
in no danger of falling into idealism, and need only firmly keep in
mind the dialectical principle of the transformation of quantity into new
qualities.
Another objection is much easier to counter. In replacing the reflex
arc (in which reaction follows stimulus in accordance with natural law)
by the closed reflex ring, which can start to function from any point on
its block diagram, we supporters of the physiology of activeness, it is
alleged, retreat from determinism. At the same time, we supposedly aban-
don the clear materialist interpretation of phenomena that is provided
by reflex theory and by assigning the reflex the role as basic construc-
tion element of life and behavior.
As I have already noted above, the “reflex in accordance with the arc
diagram” is only an approximation of the real process. As new facts
about regulation and coordination accumulated, the arc diagram had to
be replaced by the truer and more accurate diagram of a ring-wise, unin-

terrupted process. It further became clear that all receptor processes pro-
ceed actively, starting with the selection of and search for information
and accompanied by tuning, monitoring, haptic processes, and so on.
Correspondingly, the process of forming and strengthening the condi-
tioned connection between afferent signals also had to be regarded not
as a passive imprinting, requiring repetition to consolidate the connec-
tion, but as a series of active processes: (1) differentiation of the condi-
tioned stimulus being inculcated from the entire afferent flow from without;
(2) establishment by the brain of the animal of the a posteriori probability
of the combination presented; (3) consolidation of the association in the

“long-term memory” of the brain; and so on.
After all of these unavoidable corrections, it became increasingly clear
that the reflex—that is, the determinate ring-wise reaction triggered by
an irritant—is, indisputably, a real form of the manifestation of life ac-
tivity, observed in the most diverse contexts. But this form is clearly not
the only one. In any case, it is not possible to construct complex forms
of active behavior out of reflexes alone.
Of course, the behavior of a reactive automaton is more obviously
deterministic than that of an organism that is compelled constantly to
make urgent, active choices under stochastic conditions. But to free the
organism from the role of a reactive automaton at the mercy of chance
irritants is by no means tantamount to a retreat from scientific determin-
ism in the broad sense into the realm of the unknowable. In the same
way, to switch from describing a phenomenon in terms of univalent func-
tions to doing so with the aid of probability theory cannot signify a
departure from the positions of rigorous natural science.
Contemporary science has accumulated more than enough facts and
knowledge fearlessly to set about the creation of a new and deeper con-
ception to replace the first approximation that the leading lights of the
science of the classical period bequeathed us. Now it is necessary, while
firmly and strictly adhering to the principle of the unity of the world and
its laws, to point to and study the watershed that, for the time being, is
quite impassable for our technology and modeling technique but that, at
the same time, quite clearly reflects the essential difference between
living and artificial systems. It may be supposed that the features and
properties of the physiology of activeness that I have discussed in this
article will contribute to some important aspect or part of the sought-for
characterization. This, at any rate, will ease the path of inventive tech-

nological research into how to get closer to overcoming the watershed

between the biological and the technological sciences.
Notes
1. It appears that I was the first to propose the term “reflex ring.” See Osnovy
fiziologii truda [Foundations of the Physiology of Labor] (Moscow: Biomedgiz,
1934), p. 447, and others.
2. The term “reverse afferentation,” proposed by P.K. Anokhin, is hardly apt,
because there exists no “nonreverse” (noncentripetal in direction) afferentation.
3. See Essay No. 8 [not translated in this issue].
4. See Essay No. 11 [translated in this issue, pp. 33–59].

5. The group of so-called orienting reactions (not, of course, reflexes!) is a class
of reactions to divergence or discrepancy between an actual receptor impulse with
current probabilistic forecasting and active appraisal of the significance of an unex-
pected signal.
6. N.A. Bernshtein [Bernstein], O postroenii dvizhenii (Moscow: Medgiz, 1947),
p. 183; N.A. Bernshtein, “Ocherednye problemy fiziologii aktivnosti,” Problemy
kibernetiki, 1961, no. 6, p. 101.
7. I.M. Gel’fand [Gelfand], “O taktikakh upravleniia slozhnymi sistemami v
sviazi s fiziologiei,” in I.M. Gel’fand, V.S. Gurfinkel’ [Gurfinkel], and M.L. Tsetlin,
Biologicheskie aspekty kibernetiki (Moscow, 1962), p. 67; V.I. Varshavskii,
“Obuchenie stokhasticheskikh avtomatov,” in ibid., p. 192.
8. A quite universal defining feature of this second property of organisms is the
fact that at each stage and at each moment of its development and of the accompany-
ing transformational leaps the organism preserves in full measure its required ca-
pacity to live and function. No model or machine can yet do this.
9. Such equilibration would doom each individual to complete dependence on
the environment and on the changes in it, and there would be no question of pro-
grammatic morphogenesis with retention of stable characteristics of the species.
10. I.M. Gel’fand [Gelfand], “O nekotorykh sposobakh upravleniia slozhnymi
sistemami,” in I.M. Gel’fand and M.L. Tsetlin, Uspekhi matematicheskikh nauk,
1962, vol. 17, no. 1.
11. N.A. Bernshtein [Bernstein], “O postroenii dvizhenii. Ocherednye problemy
fiziologii aktivnosti,” Problemy kibernetiki, 1961, no. 6, pp. 101–60.
To order reprints, call 1-800-352-2210; outside the United States, call 717-632-3535.

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Journal of Russian & East European Psychology

ISSN: 1061-0405 (Print) 1558-0415 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrpo20

New Lines of Development in the Physiology and

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Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 44, no. 2,

New Lines of Development

in the Physiology and Biology

Beginning roughly in the second quarter of our century, physiology has

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 68 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 69 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

product of mechanistic materialism. It is, undoubtedly, our obligation

tasks of the organization of labor, which, after a number of spontaneous

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 70 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 71 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

with an uninterrupted participating flow of afferent signalization serv-

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 72 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

The decisive importance of the ring structure of processes for the

tioned forms of functioning—namely, the reception of unconditioned or

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 73 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

two stages: the stage of meaning-bearing signals of sound or gesture,

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 74 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

reason remain the sole representatives of speech in the glossaries relied

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 75 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

alized labor in the man–machine complex, the rationalization of control

In the field of theoretical physiology, all the branches that have

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 76 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

sensory information arriving in the brain by initially vacant cells pre-

much deeper, giving it the features of a very important general biologi-

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 77 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

as goal-directedness, goal-conformity, and so on.

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 78 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

of action aimed at the optimization of this future, examined here in its

its active influence on the world, as cyclical processes organized in

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 79 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

Perhaps it is precisely for this reason that it is not difficult to con-

ing the physiological mechanisms of the automation and de-automation

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 80 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

ters along the corresponding interlevel coordination ring.

04 new lines essay 12.pmd 81 5/25/2006, 10:20 AM

ography and electroneurography are continually expanding the range of

the movement by some interval of time.

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tomer money on his signature, although we can be sure that it is congru-

able indicators, while another subset, usually of metric indicators,

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to a considerable extent by the interference of a strongly variant effect

organisms by means of such a function of many variables. Here the

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treat in the face of a negative geotropism—that is, under no conditions

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relations between biological systems and the concept or class of dis-

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relations in the field of transition from the determinate to the random is

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individual behavior, of prognostication of the future, and so on that are

forms of vitalism, albeit camouflaged.

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ing the action of enzymes. The range of processes known to involve