Stories
The physiology of Nickolai Bernstein
Evolution of
the brain
and social behavior
Learning languages
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At the time I went to the Soviet Union in 1976, I had started a project to understand the structure of the nervous system in terms of motor systems. I was inspired by a series of studies by a Russian laboratory in which each of the main descending pathways from the brain to the spinal cord had been recorded during the walking of a decerebrated cat. The studies, published in a Russian journal, were not well known, but were far superior to anything being published in the West.
I made an appointment to see Grigor Orlovsky in his laboratory, but we did not have much time to talk. Another time, I went to see his colleague Marc Shik, and that was especially difficult. Shik was working under extremely difficult conditions. Each time he would do an experiment, he would have to get on a city bus, travel a long way to get a cat, and then travel all the way back in the bus with the cat in a box before he could start working on an experiment in his little, ill-equiped laboratory.
Frustrated, I finally mentioned this to my good friend Michael Michaelovich Khayutin, who set up a meeting with his friend Viktor Gurfinkel. Unlike the others, Gurfinkel's work was well-financed because he worked for the Soviet space program where he designed their "moon vehicle" which instead of using wheels, walked like an animal on the surface of the moon.
From Gurfinkel I learned about Nickolai Bernstein who had been their teacher. Bernstein's book, On the Construction of Movement, published in 1946, had laid out a new kind of physiology based on the analysis of movement and action. Hence, the work of his students Orlovsky and Shik were on motor systems and Gurfinkel's space vehicle walked instead of rolled.
With the failure of the American Independent Movement and the New Left, I was left with many questions about the political nature of the world. It was as if the movement had torn aside a veil that normally hides the functions of government and shown that it was not at all democratic and, instead, often opposed to the true interests of the citizens. And its revolutionary rhetoric, and to a lesser extent its revolutionary methods, had held out a promise to many of us that we could attain a new kind of world.
This was the theory I had been looking for. As Gurfinkel told me, Bernstein had emphasized that one could not understand the nervous system alone, but only through understanding the neuro-musculo-mechanical system as an ensemble. The classic demonstration was to have someone write his name only with fingers, only with the wrist, only with the elbow and only with the shoulder. In no case were the same joints, muscles or nerves being used, but the brain could program them all to make the same hand-writing!
As I began to read "On the Construction of Movement", I found it the most important physiology book I had ever seen. I could only read it in Russian because it has never been translated into English! The book cover shown above is about his work and that of his students, but his main book has still not been translated as of 2008, despite my own efforts described below.
In many respects, the work of Bernstein goes far beyond the technical aspects of physiology and informs the political and philosophical
Gurfinkel told me the wonderful story of how Bernstein came to his theory, a story the links politics and science in a profound way. Bernstein stayed behind after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and did not flee like most of his colleagues. Lenin personally asked him to help with the problem of worker injuries, due to the fact that all construction machinery had been destroyed by the fleeing capitalists and construction had to be done completely by hand. Bernstein agreed and used the newly available motion picture technique to film the movements of workers in lifting, hauling, etc. in order to correct the mechanical errors that led to injury.
In so doing, Bernstein reversed the history of psychology and physiology which derived from philosophy that had always been the property of the wealthy and hence emphasized perception and cognition rather than work (the wealthy give orders, they don't actually do the work).
There are profound philosophical implications of Bernstein's understanding of the nervous system. It turns out that the emergence of animal life onto the land and the great increase in metabolism and brain size was accompanied by a contradiction between the old system of movement and a new system of posture which was necessary to support the land animal and keep it from falling on the ground (in fact amphibians and reptiles that have not yet developed full postural systems spend most of their time prostrate on the ground). The movement and postural systems of mammals and birds are mutually opposed; posture resists movement and movement requires the relaxation of posture, i.e. one must literally "fall into motion."
The principle of "falling into motion" can be seen as a general principle of dialectical philosophy. Before one can move forward, one must relax, even destroy, the old that holds you back. Hence, for example, in later years at UNESCO, to institute the Culture of Peace News Network, I had to break apart the old Culture of Peace Unit. And still later, in order to move forward with my life I had to break out of my marriage with Lindsay and get divorced.
But after publishing his book in 1946, Bernstein fell victim to the Stalinist period of "cosmopolitanism" which attacked many ideas as being Western rather than Soviet (including cybernetics and computers also), and which was especially hard on Jewish intellectuals like Bernstein. Also, it didn't help that Bernstein had earlier attacked Pavlovian physiology and Pavlov was the darling of the Soviets.
I brought home a full Russian copy of Bernstein's great book along with several articles that he had published in English. I translated the first chapter myself, using the terminology that he had used in his English-language articles. On that basis, I got an agreement with Harvard Press to have it translated.
Then the fun began. The National Library of Medicine had an agreement with Egyptian translators and they prepared a version. It was unreadable. They tried again, still unreadable. So I hired a Jewish Russian immigre who had studied physiology. But he was so paranoid that it was impossible to work with him. Finally I had to give up.
As I write this in 2006, as far as I can tell, Bernstein's book has yet to be translated and published in English! But the work of Shik and Orlovsky goes on, now in the laboratory of Sten Grillner in Sweden.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme