BERNSTEIN'S HERITAGE
Motor Control, 1999, 3, 225-236
O 1999 Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc.
The Active Search for Information: From
Reflexes to the Model of the Future (1966)
losif M. Feigenberg and Onno G. Meijer
In the last year of his life, 1966, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bernstein knew
that he was terminally ill. He called me [I.M.F.] to his home, where I found several
other colleagues, which was unusual since mostly we met in private only. In a
light, optimistic tone he asked each of us what we were planning to do. For me
personally, it was clear that I had to go on with my work on probabilistic prognosis. Bernstein agreed. Somewhat later, I understood that he didn't want to see any
doctors, because it would be useless and a waste of time. His self-diagnosed cancer was beyond surgery.
In that last year, Bernstein worked very hard and published a number of
papers (cf. Feigenberg, 1988, 1990). He also worked on two books, the English
translation of his most important papers (cf. Bemstein, 1967), and a Russian book,
Outline of the Physiology of Movements and the Physiology of Activity (cf.
Bernstein, 1990). Both books were published shortly after his death. Given the
pressure he must have been under, it is amazing that he still found the time to
publish a short paper, "From reflexes to the model of the future" in the popular
journal NedeZja (The Week), published here for the first time in English.
Whenever I visited him in that last year, things were as before-we would talk
about my work rather than his problems, and he gave me inspiration to proceed. A
couple of days before his death, Luria called, telling me that Bernstein's health was
deteriorating quickly. At the funeral, Gel'fand emphasized in his speech that Bernstein had been a brilliant physiologist and an excellent mathematician. When we
walked back, Tsetlin stated sadly that he feared Bernstein would very soon be forgotten and that his ideas would continue to live under the names of other authors. It
was then that I began to dream of publishing Bernstein's last book in the Classics of
Science of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (cf. Bernstein, 1990).
Bernstein's Political Testament
To the best of our knowledge, the present paper is the only publication of Bernstein's
with "model of the future" in its title (cf. Feigenberg, 1988, 1990). One may wonder why this is the case.
Iosif M. Feigenberg, emeritus professor of psychophysiology, can be reached at P.O.
Box 11244, Gilo, 91112, Jerusalem, Israel. Onno G. Meijer is with the Faculty of Human
Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Van der Boechorststraat 9, 1081 BT Amsterdam,
The Netherlands.
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Feigenberg and Meijer
It must be emphasized beforehand that this is a popular paper, written by
Bernstein just before his death. The paper is interesting because it reveals why he
deemed the physiology of activity to be important, not only within his own science
but also from a broader point of view. It is fairly easy to dismiss Bernstein's physiology of activity as the ramblings of an old man who fell back to dualism after his
earlier success. In our opinion, however, Bernstein's physiology of activity should
be taken seriously by historians as well as scientists. We offer two reasons for this
point of view, one concerning the "politics7' of Bernstein's intellectual biography
and one concerning the scientific expediency of using the concept "model of the
future" to explain specific experimental data.
The main point of Bernstein's now famous 1935 paper on coordination and
localization was to attack Pavlov's idea that conditioned reflexes are related 1: 1 to
specific cortical cells ("the cortex as a distribution panel with push buttons,"
Bernstein, 1935167, pp. 19-20). Unfortunately, Bernstein's timing could not have
been worse: In 1935, the 15th International Physiological Congress was held in
Leningrad and Moscow, with Pavlov as chairman (Babkin, 1974; Solandt, 1935).
At the time, Pavlov enjoyed "enormous prestige" in Russia (Barcroft, 1936, p.
484), while he was also a member of the Royal Society. Worldwide, Pavlov was
regarded as the "doyen [dean] of physiologists" (p. 483).
The next year, Bemstein finished a book in which his critique of Pavlov's
mechanicism had been worked out in much greater detail (cf. Bernstein, 1936). In
the same year, however, Pavlov died, and Bernstein deemed it unseemly to publish
his book now that Pavlov could no longer defend himself. Nevertheless, he continued to depart from Pavlovianism, particularly in his book On Dexterity and its
Development (cf. 1996), in which he emphasized that animals with a cortex solve
motor problems in always novel ways. Instead of Pavlov's passive view of the
animal, Bernstein was developing an active view.
Then, disaster struck. Anti-Semitism was on the rise, and articles were published against Bernstein, fnst in the journal Theory and Practice in Physical Culture, then in the Pravda (Feigenberg & Latash, 1996). From June 28 through July
4,1950, the joint session of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical
Sciences was held under the title, Scientific Session Dedicated to the Problems of
the Physiological Theory of Academician 1.R Pavlov (Akademija Nauk SSSR &
Akademija Meditsinskikh Nauk SSSR, 1950). Under the guise of Pavlovianism,
Bykov and Ivanov-Smolenskii (leading "neoPavlovians") attempted to dispose of
their adversaries.
F.M.F.] I was too young, and too unimportant, to be allowed into the main
hall. We were sitting in a small room, listening to the discussions through
loudspeakers. We could hear them, but they could not hear us. The attack
was mainly on Orbeli, Pavlov's trusted student. There was no one who wanted
to take over Bernstein's job, so there was no major speech against him. Still,
now that Pavlov's epigones were in power, we knew that it would be irnpossible to discuss Bernstein and his views in public.
- -
Bernstein was fned in 1950, to be rehabilitated a short time after Stalin's
death in 1953. Nevertheless, the spectre of neoPavlovianism continued to haunt
him (cf. Bongaardt, 1996). Much of Bernstein's later work was dedicated to the
idea that animals are active, the "physiology of activity," clearly in conflict with
- the-viewsof the-neoPavlotrim~z~Even*~~e:
1960s;discvssing sCcb ideas invited
Model of the Future
227
difficulties. At the time, Khrushchev's government attempted to stimulate experimental science, while the apparatchiks tried to consolidate their own power. From
May 8 through 11, 1962, anotherjoint session was organized, this time also of the
Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (Akademija Nauk SSSR, Institut Filosofii, 1963;
cf. Graham, 1987). Bemstein gave a paper on his physiology of activity, written
first for an "official version" in the stenographic notes of the joint session (published as Bernstein, 1963), and then for "real scientists" in the Voprosy Filosofii
(Questions of Philosophy; Bernstein, 1962).
From the neoPavlovians, Lekhtman was chosen to attack Bernstein:
Bernstein's archaic interpretation of voluntary actions as spontaneous acts
of the nervous system,involuntarilycreates a feeling of bewilderment. Clearly,
we have here an unambiguous statement of an indeterministic view of voluntary movements as being independent from the environment,a notion which
was rejected by materialistic science already a long time ago. (cf. Lekhtman,
1963, p. 554)
And so Lekhtman rambles on for 7 pages. Of course, Bernstein didn't get arrested
and couldn't even lose his influence on the scientific establishment-he had none.
Nevertheless, one clearly sees that the "official" version of his paper (1963) is much
more careful in tone than the "scientific" one (1962). He had to tread with care.
It is highly significant that, in 1966, Bemstein decided to include the scientific version of his 1962 paper in the English translation of his most important
works (Bernstein, 1962167). And we are convinced that also Bernstein's 1966
NedeZja paper on the model of the future should be understood in the context of
neoPavlovianism. It was his final day of reckoning.
The Model of the Future
Apart from the politics of Bernstein's intellectual biography, there are also scientific reasons to take the model of the future seriously. These center around the
concept of information.
NeoPavlovianism assumed a direct relationship between the physical intensity of the stimulus and the strength of the response (Gray, 1979). The orienting
reaction shattered this image, since it is related to the quality and not to the quantity of the stimulus. An orienting reaction occurs whenever the organism perceives
something novel, something unexpected. Hence, the orienting reaction cannot be
understood without the concept of "information" (as opposed to the physical quantity
of the stimulus; cf. Bemstein, 1961167; Feigenberg, 1966).
Recognizing the unexpected suggests that the animal was expecting something else. Such a model of the future can only be a probabilisticprognosis of what
would normally occur if nothing else would intervene (Bernstein, 1961167;
Feigenberg, 1969). It has been shown that organisms are quite good at discovering
the probabilistic structure of groups of events. Consider for instance the experiment of Feigenberg (cf. 1998), in which healthy human subjects were confronted
with series of four different stimuli, having to react differently to each of them.
When offering the stimuli, the experimenter chose the fist one randomly, the second one randomly from the remaining three, etc. After four stimuli, a new series
was offered, randomized as before. In this way the probability of aparticular stirnulus to appear was: 114, 113, 112, 1, again 114, and so on. Reaction times (Ti) were
Feigenberg and Meijer
228
measured. It was found that T, > T, > T, > T,, subscripts referring to the place
within one series of four. Thus, subjects recognized that each set of four stimuli
formed a dependent chain, while the fifth stimulus would be completely independent again.
The above interpretationof the orienting reaction and the concept of "probabilistic prognosis" have proven to be very useful in interpreting schizophrenic
defects. In schizophrenia, the orienting reaction is often lacking, as if these patients do not know what to expect (cf. Feigenberg, 1971). In the 1960s, E.M.
Bogdanov performed some experiments which not only confirm this interpretation but are also difficult to interpret on the basis of more mechanicistic theories
(cf. Feigenberg, 1972, 1974). Subjects were shown a blurred image on a screen,
gradually brought into focus. They had to indicate the moment when they recognized the image. It turned out that healthy subjects recognized normal images
quicker than patients did, while abnormal images were recognized quicker by the
patients. With normal images, healthy subjects are helped by their knowledge of
the probabilistic structure of visual events, but with the abnormal images they are
hampered by this same knowledge! Again, it appears to be the case that patients
with schizophrenia do not use such a probabilistic model of the future, or maybe
do not even have one.
The above illustrates that there were, and still are, good scientific reasons to
use the concept "model of the future," or a similar concept. What Bemstein added
to this model of what would normally happen was his "model of the needed future." If this needed future would not coincide with the expected future, then the
organism had to make a plan. In a way, this is "information processing" as it was
also coming of age in the West. Since Bernstein's days, information processing
has turned so much into a quantitative science (cf. Meijer & Roth, 1988) that it
may be hard to remember the qualitative difference between information and the
physical properties of a stimulus. More important, Bernstein not only stressed the
active role of the organism (cf. Gibson, 1979) but also insisted on creating a naturalistic theory of information.
From Reflexes to the Model of the Future*
N.A. Bernstein
Corresponding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR
Key Words: motor control, physiology of activity, conditionedreflexes
Today, we are witnessing an onslaught of new ideas in all fields of the life
sciences. These ideas have proven to be very fruitful, both in themselves and in
their practical applications, considerably enlarging the power of man over living
nature. Let us inform you, in a few words, about a very young but already promising sprout of biology-the biology and physiology of activity.'
As we all know, the demands of industrial production and of defense have
continued to grow and to become more complex. In the last two or three decades:
this has led to the emergence and maturation of a new science, cybernetics, the
theory of control and communication. Theoretical and applied cybernetics have
splendidly served those branches of industry that called it into life. At least one
Model of the Future
229
aspect of cybernetics, that is, control, was discovered to be typical of living nature,
nowhere to be found in the inorganic world as long as man does not interfere.
This fact turned out to be extremely useful to cybernetics, because the science of life, biology, could suggest highly efticient solutionsfor a large number of
technical control problems. To the engineers, biology revealed systems for regulation, control, and even communication, which are wonderful in their perfection
and can be found in many species in the animal world. As a separate line of scientific inquiry, "bionics" developed, best defined as the imitation of living systems
and their use in technical applications.
The fact that was mentioned above also prompted the biologists themselves
to think about control. Actually, it was only under the impact of cybernetics and its
practical applications that biologists, for the first time, occupied themselves with
asking what is the nature of "control," and why and how it arises in the world of
plants and animals.
First and foremost, we want to emphasize that control and controllability
never and nowhere come into being in isolation, as phenomena that exist just for
their own sake. Control is needed whenever a task3is set, a goal is determined that
has to be r e a ~ h e dIt. ~is essential that the wings or the extremities of an animal are
controllable, so that they can obediently cany the animal in the direction needed,
to the point where something attracts it to walk or fly toward. The human arms and
hands consist of chains with many links; contro11abi1ity5is essential in making
them obedient whenever a person is engaged in physical labor, or uses his or her
fingers in writing or drawing. Last but not least, control and controllability are key
factors in the most fundamental manifestation of life, that is, de~elopment.~
Notwithstanding all kinds of obstacles, and the complexity of living conditions, controllability and control guarantee that an acorn always develops into an oak, not a
maple or a lime tree, and that the egg of a hen grows into a chicken, not a swan or
a flamingo.
It is exactly because living organisms develop in a goal-directed fashion,
and act goal-directedly, that controllability emerged in the world of plants and
animals. Humans and animals need a compliant controllability of their body organs, so that they can act on their environment as necessary. When a bird builds its
nest, its actions are goal-directed;the bird doesn't move to and fro without a plan.
It appears to be guided by something akin to a plan, or a goal to which its actions
are leading. Apredatory fish hunting for its prey, the actions of a monkey climbing
a tree, the flight of an insect to a flower it needs, etc., all these and countless other
examples are goal-directed actions.
The brain of a living organism receives information from its sensory systems about the present state of the environment, about what is happening now. In
many respects, we still don't understand the inner workings of the brain, but to
date we are allowed to conclude that the brain itself constructs an image or a plan
of what should arise from the current environment, in accordance with the need of
this particular living organism. Science still has a long way to go to understand in
what code and in which form these images, or models of the neededfuture? are
laid down in the brain, but there is no doubt about their real existence, and their
importance for the activity of living organisms.
This is the most important, one could say the key contribution of theoretical
cybernetics to biological science. Control and controllability are needed, and arise
whenever a task requires active intervention on the environment, which can be
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Feigenberg and Meijer
planned in advance by the living organism in one way or another. Controllability
allows the organism to pursue the accomplishment of this task in a goal-directed
manner-within a given number of seconds or other units of time. This, in a nutshell, is what the biology (and physiology) of activity are about, the new science
that emerged from biological cybernetics and that has already shown many facets
of its practical applicability.
Let us limit ourselves in this short essay to the physiology of actions in
humans and in those animals that are very close to man. This will allow us to
present a number of examples that reveal how much this new branch of science
has helped in solving a large number of problems in an area where science, until
recently, was at a dead end.
Let us start with movements. Until not so long ago, science tended to ignore
this form of living activity (the importance of which cannot be denied). It was
completely unclear how to interpret the phenomena involved and how to make
them accessible to research. It is important to note that movement is virtually the
only form of living activity that allows the living organism not only to interact
with its environment but also to actively operate on it, and to change it as necessary. In the past, physiology failed to arrive at a deeper understanding of movement since it attached the greatest weight to the fact that in many cases movement
starts after an external stimulus. In this way, movement was understood as belonging to the large area of so-called "reflexes." s From the time of Descartes, reflexes
were attributed an importance for the physiology of man and animals that was
totally unjustified. In fact, the external stimulus can either be present or absent.
More important, theories of reflexes did not even hint at an explanation as to why
the movement presents itself in one way and not another. Nor was it clear what
movements mean and what purpose they have. The physiology of activity succeeded in understanding these aspects in a different way, with deeper significance.
Movement starts from, or is produced by, a motor task that is defined in the
brain. The brain lays down a model of the needed future for this task and makes a
draft of how, by which road, and in which stages one can go from the current
situation to a future solution to the problem. In terms of cybernetics, this is called
programming9the action. Here, cybernetics has been very helpful to physiology in
providing a valid definition.
In order to put such a program to work, controllability of the locomotor
apparatus of the body is needed. It has become clear that the control of this bonejoint-muscle system is realized under very complex conditions. Control and controllability ensure that the motor problem at hand can really be solved. It is important to note that almost any movement, as long as it is meaningful and goal-directed,
will have to overcome this or that external force-the wind, resistance of the material or of an opponent, etc. None of these forces can be predicted, and the subject
is not in control over them. Thus, in order to cope with these forces (and also with
the reaction forces between the links, which in the extremities are connected by
joints), one has to maneuver with flexibility and adaptability. Here our organism
uses a rich regulating system that works with feedback,1° a mechanism that is also
well known in technical automation. Several sensory organs provide the brain with
information about obstructions and mismatches.'l From all that was said above,
we now can understand the following. The clearer the actual motor task is, the
more precisely it is determined in the brain. And the more the living organism
exible,,adaptable,-and variable must be t
Model of the Future
231
program for its solution, and the role of the regulating mechanisms that allow this
program to be realized.
In many actions, including uncomplicated ones, one can see this adaptive
variability with the naked eye. Try to look at yourselves, for instance, when you
hammer a nail into the wall, when you tie your laces or your tie a couple of times
successively, sharpen your pencil, cut meat, etc. None of your repeated movements will be identical to any other one, although all of them will be expedient. In
fact, they will be expedient because they are not identical.
It should be clear by now that building up a motor skill-in sports, work,
arts, etc.--consists of building up the controllability of that skill. An exercise, if
correctly applied, should never repeat one time after another the same means for
solving the motor problem at hand-that would just be a pointless drill-but instead should repeat the process of solving i t In that way, the solutions will slowly
become more precise to then reach perfection.
Accordingly, movements are always variable and never identical, even in
the case of the highest developed skill or aptitude. Precise physiological analysis
has revealed that these variable differences among the successive realizations of a
skilled movement have at least three different sources. First, as discussed above,
the organism adapts to external disturbances which cannot be controlled beforehand. Second, variability results from the continuous updating of the everchanging
inner states of the organism itself: the changing excitability of all muscle units,
their blood supply, etc. Finally, there is search variability,12stemming from the
controlling and programming apparatus in the brain itself. This apparatus continues to be engaged in an active search for the best procedure to solve the given
motor problem. It is through such continued search that movements acquire a high
degree of stability with respect to different obstacles, that the motor skill acquires
the potential to resist a large number of perturbing influences. Soviet cosmonautics
has revealed the usefulness of correctly applied terrestrial training for the stability
of motor skills, with respect to obstacles that were met under the extremely unusual conditions of space flight.13
By researching the control systems and the action systems of living organisms, the physiology of activity also opened new ways for the young science of
bionics. Initially, bionics focused on the sensory organs of animals. In their diversity and perfection, these sensory organs stimulated the fantasy of the scientists.
Today, bionics starts as well to collect material about the movement organs of
animals, and the movement mechanisms involved, which also reveal a large number of marvelous "technical solutions." By way of example, we mention the enigmatic but real miscroscopic properties of the skin of aquatic mammals (dolphins),
which ensure that the water streams around them in a laminar way, without turbulence, so they can swim with phenomenal agility and speed. We also mention the
aerodynamic properties of the fringed structure of bird feathers, so far largely
unresearched. This structure is different in feathers that are used for different motor tasks. Wing movements have very peculiar kinematics, both in birds and in
flying insects. These wings possess a high degree of aerodynamical efficiency
which, with our present technology, we are still not able to imitate.
In the last decades, we have seen a great number of attempts to explain the
mysterious problem of goal-directed bird migration over large distances, and the
migration of aquatic animals in the oceans. Birds who make their summer nests in
the North can find exactly the same earthen knoll in a forest, or the same ridge on
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Feigenberg and Mever
a roof, where they built their nest the previous year. Turtles who live on the shores
of Central America can cross the Atlantic and reach without mistake the tiny islands they have chosen for laying their eggs, often more than a thousand kilometers away from the continent. Dozens of plausible hypotheses have been proposed
as to what it is that directs these animals when they perform such actions, and a
large number of often very interesting experiments have been carried out. But it
appears that only the physiology of activity can reveal why all this work led to the
dead end, which is still where science finds itself in trying to solve this problem.14
Indeed, however different the detectors of, for instance, migratory birds may
be, and however rich their assortment (there is no doubt about the rich supply in a
migratory bird with such providers of information), what would the brain of the
bird do with all the streams of information if there were no basis for comparison?
The evolutionary origin of these kind of detectors, and the way and manner of
their use, can onlylShave their basis in the ability of the bird's brain to construct a
precise inner model of the required route. Unveiling the nature of this model, and
in what code it has been written in the brain of the bird or the turtle, will offer the
only valid key for designing precise experiments that can solve the problem of the
navigation mechanisms in these animals.I6
Another branch of biocybernetics also takes its starting point in the physiology (and psychology1') of activity: heuristics, occupying itself with planned searches
for optimal solutions and for action programs. At first, the technical problem of
machine translation from one language into another appears to be very far removed from both physiology and activity. Still, this is an area where the fruitful
new ideas from the scientific study of activity are becoming ever more influential.
A new and promising starting point is found in the guiding principle that speech is
an act that reflects active thought.ls
Here, then, in a very short summary, are the many rich perspectives for theory
and practice that are being opened to us by the physiology of activity, and the
encompassing field of biological science, the biology of activity.19
Editor's Notes
*Thepaper appeared in the popular weekly NedeZja (The Week), 1966,Vol. 20, pp. 89, shortly after Bernstein's death. It was translated by Ines M. Rubin and edited for clarity.
'Lev Latash has pointed out that this idea of "activity" entails the notion of "initiative" (cf. Meijer & Bongaardt, 1998), The Russian aktivnost, the opposite of passivnost,
refers to a situation in which the subject makes something happen. Maybe the translation
"physiology of action" would be the most appropriate, but because the tenn activity is
generally known from Vygotsky's psychology of activity (cf. Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1994),
akn'vnost will be translated as "activity" throughout this paper.
Zit is left to the reader to decide whether these developments began with Wiener's
work in World War I1 (cf. 1948), or with Bernstein's own 1935 publication (cf. 1935167).
Note that Bernstein's takes the definition of "cybernetics" from Wiener's work.
3[I.M.R.] Bernstein uses the term zadacha, which usually translates as "task"; when
this task has to be "solved," zadacha will be translated as "problem."
4Bernstein popularized the notion of "controllability" in his On Dexterity and its
Development, written in 194546 (cf. 1996). Then, he stated: "Coordination i s . . . turning
the movement organs into controllable systems" (p. 41, emphasis in the original). In the
present paper, he puts controllability (and thus, coordination) in the context of goals and
Model of the Future
233
problems to be solved. From the late 1940s onward, Bernstein worked on the idea that
animals solve motor problems. Solving such problems, he would state, depends on the
animal's ability to lay down a model of the future, "the essence of the matter. . . as yet
unrealized" (Bernstein 1961167,p. 150). These models arise from stochastic extrapolation
of the past-present (cf. Meijer & Bongaardt, 1998). Bernstein's conception of such models
was greatly influenced by the mathematical search theory of Gel'fand and Tsetlin (e.g.,
Gel'fand, Gurfinkel, & Tsetlin, 1963), which made it possible to understand how the animal
arrives at a distinction between essential and nonessential variables.
3n their introduction to the paper, the editors of Nedelja point out that Bernstein had
already published some ideas on biological cybernetics in the 1930s. In this respect, it is
remarkable that Bernstein himself does not refer to his theory of coordination (cf. 1935167)
in this 1966 paper. One may assume that he regarded his message concerning the model of
the future so important that he didn't want to be distracted by any "technical aspect of
movements" (Bernstein, 1961167, p. 162; cf. Bongaardt, 1996, p. 40).
6Bernstein never claimed that, in order for development to be controllable, DNA
must also be "coordinated." One year after the publication of the present paper, Stuart
Kauffman (cf. 1993) made exactly that claim. Bernstein himself did envision that DNA
somehow embodies a "model of the future." In 1962he stated that "the organism possesses
from the moment of fertilization of the ovum a coded model of its future development and
a coded program of the consecutive stages in this development" (1962167, p. 174). Bonner
(cf. 1973) had similar views on the mechanisms of development, but critique was strong
(e.g., Pattee, 1973), both because anthropomorphism should be avoided in understanding
DNA, and because such "models" in DNA are genetically expensive. Nevertheless, even
today the nature of "molecular intelligence" is poorly understood. How is it, for instance,
that bacteria "recognize" whether they should ingest a particular plasmid from their environment, and how do they "decide" when to incorporate the DNA content of such a plasmid
into their own genome (Garrett, 1994)? Or how does the AIDS virus "know" that it is in
trouble and to then switch to a higher mutation rate (Goudsmit, 1997)?
"[I.M.R.] Although its meaning is clear, the Russian adjective potrebnoje is unusual.
In Bemstein (1967), it was translated as "necessary" (e.g., p. 150). Pickenhain (Pickenhain
& Schnabel, 1988) used e$orderlich (e.g., p. 199). Potrebnoje refers to the subject who
needs, so the translation "needed" seems more accurate.
Wote that Bemstein here begins to address the issue of neoPavlovianism. His attack
(as in "totally unjustified," in the next sentence) is relatively sharp.
%le in 1935Bernstein had entertained the idea that a "program" could pre-specify
the time-structure of a movement (Bernstein, 1935167, p. 24; cf. Bongaardt, 1996, p. 34),
this 1966paper reveals how dramaticallyhis conception of "programming" had changed. If
one compares Bernstein's 1966 statements with what later became classical views in the
West (e.g., Keele, 1968; Schmidt, 1975), it is fascinating to see how for Bernstein, programs should be "more flexible, adaptable and variable" (see below), the more important
they are. Bernstein's highly abstract notion of a "program" appears to entail that when the
organism needs to achieve X, it should first reach x,, then x,, etc., searching for sensory
information all the time about how far it has progressed, which obstacles present themselves, etc., ready to reprogram whenever needed.
'Wote that Bernstein uses Wiener's (1948) term, rather than his own, more precise,
"sensory corrections" (1935167).
"One of us (cf. Feigenberg, 1994) remembers crossing a square, while pondering
Bernstein's "model of the future." Doves were sitting in front of me, forming a ring. When
I approached the doves, those who were sitting to my left stepped a little to the left, and
Feigenberg and Meger
234
those to my right stepped to the right. Thus a conidor was created for me. Then I made one
step to the left, and all the doves flew up immediately. Apparently, there was a "mismatch"
between their probabilistic prognosis of what would happen (cf. Feigenberg, 1998) and my
stepping to the left.
lZCf.Gel'fand and Tsetlin (1961).
'Wote the implicit suggestion that the most prestigious project of all, the conquest of
space, is indebted to the physiology of activity.
140nemay wonder why Bemstein doesn't discuss the ethological literature from the
West. In the Soviet Union of the 1960s,popular works of Lorenz and Tinbergen were widely
read. Scientifically, however, the study of animal behavior was supposed to proceed on the
basis of conditioned reflexes. Thus, the scientific ethological literature from the West was
very hard to find in the Soviet Union, a situation that only changed in the 1970s.
lSThisis a overstatement. The organism should know how to search for the route, but
does not need any exact knowledge of the "required route" itself. It may be sufficient to
activate a receptor, and then orient oneself by using the gradients in the field, as has been
described for the movements of cells in the embryology of the brain (Edelman, 1988).
I6Note that Bemstein does not offer a clue as to how these phenomena should be
investigated.
"Such (almost) direct references to the work of bgotsky (cf. Note 1) are extremely rare.
'?t is unclear what Bemstein was thinking here. These were the days of almost unlimited optimism over the possible use of computers. In 1999, translating machines, as
envisioned by Bemstein in 1966, still do not exist.
I9Atthe end of the paper, one realizes that not much new was said, and that Bemstein
didn't elaborate any of the more scientific reasons for using the concept "model of the
future." However, there are several distinct characteristics of the paper: (a) it has "model of
the future" in its title; (b) it does not mention the "technical aspect" of coordination; (c) the
neoPavlovians are clearly attacked; (d) the practical use of the physiology of activity in
cosmonautics is mentioned with apparent pride; and (e) the work of Vygotsky is mentioned.
These characteristics have led us to believe that Bemstein used this paper to show a large
audience how much scientific progress in the Soviet Union had been hampered by
neoPavlovianism. Maybe he just wanted to make sure his students could work in more
relaxed conditions than those of his own life.
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Acknowledgments
We are p t e f u l to Inessa M. Rubin, Alex Kozulin (Jerusalem), and Mark L. Schick (Tel
Aviv) for their stimulating insights; Peter J. Beek, Claire F. Michaels (Amsterdam), Mark L.
Latash Venn State), and Eberhard h s c h @rfurt) for their useful comments on an earlier
M,and G. Sander de Wolf for his help in preparing the final manuscript.