[From Bruce Abbott (950926.1845 EST)]
I think you'll enjoy the following extract from a "recent" lecture at Moscow
University. It has a certain familiar ring:
These facts can be easily reconciled if we draw a parallel between the
muscles and glands with their nervous mechanisms, on the one hand, and
machines, on the other. In this case a muscle, abstracted from its
nervous connections, can be regarded as an essential component of a
machine designed to perform mechanical work, and the nervous apparatus
as an accessory device corresponding to the regulators which enable
the mechanic to operate his machine, to accelerate, decelerate or stop
its work altogether. The nervous system initiates the work of the
muscles and of (certain) glands, and since the functioning of this
system, like that of a machine, is at times accelerated (due to certain
requirements of the organism), or decelerated and even stopped altogether
it is clear that the entire regulation derives from the nervous system.
In most machines the regulation is done by the operator whose hand brings
a particular device into action. But there are some regulators which
replace the operator's hand: they come into action, so to speak,
automatically, but actually under the influence of certain changes in the
functioning of the machine. The safety valve of Watt's steam-engine is
the best known example of such a regulator. As the pressure of the steam
in the boiler exceeds a definite limit, the valve automatically widens
the exhaust outlet, and vice versa. The numerous devices of this kind
are called automatic regulators.
In the animal, which is a kind of self-acting machine, the regulators are
also automatic, being brought into action by changes in the state of the
machine or in its functioning. As the work of these regulators is
expedient, they replace the hand of the operator which is guided by his
mind.
(I. M. Sechenov, 1889)
Sechenov is regarded as the father of Russian physiology; the above was
taken from the postscript to the 1965 translation of Sechenov's _Reflexes of
the Brain_, Pp. 143-144, published by the MIT press.
Regards,
Bruce