Remember this? --------------------------- Paul Brandon wrote:
> Was Hebb the one who coined the term "Conceptual Nervous System > (CNS)"? It's not indexed in his "Essay on Mind"; unfortunately I no > longer have the copy of his textbook that I used when I first took > psychology in 1960. Stephen Black wrote: Yes. It's right there in the title of one his most famous essays: Hebb, D.O. (1955). Drives and the C.N.S. (Conceptual nervous system). Psychological Review, 62, 243-254. ------------------------- No, of course you don't. That exchange took place almost a decade ago (November 11, 1999) but the Internet has a long memory. Just the other day Holly the graduate student at Laurentian University (No? It's in Sudbury, Ontario) wrote to tell me I was wrong when I gave Paul that response. I'm sorry, Paul. Holly is right. It wasn't Hebb who invented the term--it was Skinner. But it was Hebb's fault I got it wrong. In _Drives and the C.N.S._ (available at Chris's http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Hebb/), in his opening paragraph Hebb casually links Skinner to that term, but there is no explicit citation, so it was far from clear that it was Skinner's invention. But as Holly pointed out to me, Hebb admitted in an essay on his famous paper (Citation classic at http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1979/A1979HZ26100001.pdf) that the title of Hebb's paper was a little joke inspired by Skinner who had said that the "C" in "CNS" stood for "conceptual". But still no reference. But the Internet has a long memory. A quick google shows that Skinner used the term in his "Are theories of learning necessary" paper (Psych Review, 1950; see http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Theories/ at Chris's site again). Skinner actually said there: "The writer's suggestion that the letters CNS be regarded as representing, not the Central Nervous System, but the Conceptual Nervous System (2, p. 421), seems to have been taken seriously." The reference (2) is to his great (1938) work, _The Behavior of Organisms_. So there you have it. Nine years after Paul posed the question, we have the definitive answer. It was Skinner who coined the phrase, not Hebb. Thank you Holly (but not you, Donald Hebb). Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [email protected] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
