Love-hate for man-machine metaphors in Soviet physiology: from Pavlov to "physiological cybernetics".

This article reinterprets the debate between orthodox followers of the Pavlovian reflex theory and Soviet "cybernetic physiologists" in the 1950s and 60s as a clash of opposing man-machine metaphors. While both sides accused each other of "mechanistic," reductionist methodology, they did not see anything "mechanistic" about their own central metaphors: the telephone switchboard metaphor for nervous activity (the Pavlovians), and the analogies between the human brain and a computer (the cyberneticians). I argue that the scientific utility of machine analogies was closely intertwined with their philosophical and political meanings and that new interpretations of these metaphors emerged as a result of political conflicts and a realignment of forces within the scientific community and in society at large.