Vladimir Mikhailovitch Bekhterev was a pioneering Russian neurologist, psychiatrist, and psychologist. A highly esteemed rival of Ivan Pavlov, his achievements in the areas of personality, clinical psychology, and political and social psychology were recognized and acclaimed throughout the world. However, when his version of reflexological doctrine ran afoul of official Soviet ideology in the 1920s his work was banned and his influence suppressed through the dispersal of his many colleagues and disciples. Bekhterev himself died in 1927 under mysterious circumstances. This translation of Suggestion and Its Role in Social Life is a significant instance of intellectual and cultural restoration. It marks a starting point of Bekhterev's lifelong endeavor to relate his clinical observations and philosophy of science to problems of the social world. Bekhterev's investigation reviews and explains the many conflicting positions in the social and scientific thought concerning the nature and power of suggestion. He takes pains to differentiate the process from persuasion and hypnosis, and discusses suggestion and autosuggestion in the waking state, examining their effectiveness on feeling, thought, and behavior. He then discusses the destructive consequences of the process—violent crime, suicide, witchcraft, and devil-possession hysteria— in a wide variety of contexts important in the Russia, Europe and North America of the period. Bekhterev presents a structural model of the mind, including both conscious and unconscious realms, and the phenomena of suggestion without awareness; in doing so he anticipated much present-day work on preconscious influence. Suggestion and Its Role in Social Life is a landmark study in collective psychological research that may lead to revisions in histories of social psychology. It will be read by psychologists, sociologists, and social historians.
There is an ever-growing interest in control problems today, con nected with the urgent problems of the effective use of natural resources, manpower, materials, and technology. When referring to the most important achievements of science and technology in the 20th Century, one usually mentions the splitting of the atom, the exploration of space, and computer engineering. Achievements in control theory seem less spectacular when viewed against this background, but the applications of control theory are playing an important role in the development of modern civilization, and there is every reason to believe that this role will be even more signifi cant in the future. Wherever there is active human participation, the problem arises of finding the best, or optimal, means of control. The demands of economics and technology have given birth to optimization problems which, in turn, have created new branches of mathematics. In the Forties, the investigation of problems of economics gave rise to a new branch of mathematical analysis called linear and convex program ming. At that time, problems of controlling flying vehicles and technolog ical processes of complex structures became important. A mathematical theory was formulated in the mid-Fifties known as optimal control theory. Here the maximum principle of L. S. Pontryagin played a pivotal role. Op timal control theory synthesized the concepts and methods of investigation using the classical methods of the calculus of variations and the methods of contemporary mathematics, for which Soviet mathematicians made valuable contributions.
Lithography, the fundamental fabrication process of semiconductor devices, plays a critical role in micro- and nano-fabrications and the revolution in high density integrated circuits. This book is the result of inspirations and contributions from many researchers worldwide. Although the inclusion of the book chapters may not be a complete representation of all lithographic arts, it does represent a good collection of contributions in this field. We hope readers will enjoy reading the book as much as we have enjoyed bringing it together. We would like to thank all contributors and authors of this book.
For ten days, a number of neuroscientists met at Reisensburg to attend a series of lectures and discussions, an Institute, on animal learning. The students were drawn from a wide variety of disciplines, including anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology, physiol ogy and zoology. It is probably true to say that many of them had at best a sketchy knowledge about the learning behavior of animals, about the conditions which are necessary for learning to take place and about the theories that psychologists have constructed about the learning processes. Was the Institute of any benefit to those neuro scientists whose interests lay in studying the functioning of the nervous system by manipulating it or probing it in some direct way? Some twenty years ago the answer to this question would probably have been "No"; and there is a very good reason why this view might have been held, especially by students of the mammalian nervous system. At that time most investigators used anaesthetised animals, or animals immobilized in some other way such as by surgically isolating the brain from the spinal cord, by dividing the brain at various levels or through the use of paralyzing agents. These con ditions achieved two things. On the one hand, they allowed sub stantial advances to be made, particularly in the analysis of sensory processing and in the analysis of the neuronal mechanisms of relatively simple reflex action. On the other hand, the experi mental conditions virtually eliminated complex behavior.
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