Inspired in part by @LeslieKay & the #OldNeuroPapers initiative, I read Tolman's 1948 paper "Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men":
https://personal.utdallas.edu/~tres/spatial/tolman.pdf
Not sure how I got this far without reading it, and I recommend it to anyone who also hasn't. We simply do not see this type of paper anymore. I wonder: Are we better worse off for it?
At it's core, it contains the thing we all still aspire to: a clear illustration of competing ideas about how the brain/mind works, compared with the evidence. But it also contains two things we don't do anymore.
First, it's peppered with saucy: "Most of the rat investigations, which I shall report, were carried out in the Berkeley laboratory. But I shall also include, occasionally, accounts of the behavior of non-Berkeley rats who obviously have misspent their lives in out-of- State laboratories."
While this is amusing, it's probably best that we've left this snark behind?
Second, the discussion extends ideas around cognitive maps, tested with rats running through mazes, into thoughts around social justice: "I am not myself a clinician or a social psychologist. What I am going to say must be considered, therefore, simply as in the nature of a rat psychologist's ratiocinations offered free ... the expression of these their displaced hates ranges all the way from discrimination against minorities to world conflagrations ...What in the name of Heaven and Psychology can we do about it? My only answer is to preach again the virtues of reason—of, that is, broad cognitive maps."
This might not belong in scientific papers per se. But I wonder is something has been left behind here in the narrowing of the field?
@NicoleCRust @cogneurophys
I really miss the times when scientists commented about the implications of their work or the field. (I did this in my recent COVID-19 and dementia paper, only time ever). Personal commentary makes things so much more interesting and human - our own emotional connection with the work is an important part of science. Everyone reads that part of the Tolman paper as him talking about what the work means to him personally, not necessarily over interpreting. Tolman was a man of his word though. If you don't know his political biography, you should. He stood up to the loyalty oath at Univ of CA during the McCarthy era. He advised jr colleagues to sign it. He and several others were fired. They took the case to the CA Supreme Court and won. One of his grad students was Don Kalish (cited in one of the papers in the review), later a Prof of Philosophy at UCLA. I studied logic with him there when I was in high school, and he was cut from the same cloth. Deeply principled for the public good.
@LeslieKay @NicoleCRust @cogneurophys
did you mean he advised jr colleagues *not* to sign it?
@kendmiller @NicoleCRust @cogneurophys
Here's one paper on the history of the oath and Tolman's involvement. He was 62 at the time and figured he had less to lose than his younger colleagues and could use his fame and power to challenge the system. Food for thought in the times we find ourselves in now.
For some insight into his background, from the article: "Tolman came from a family with an interest in social issues.His grandparents had operated
a station on the Underground Railroad in Rhode Island during the slavery years (Blauner, ).
His mother was a Quaker, and he was a lifelong pacifist."
@kendmiller @NicoleCRust @cogneurophys
No! He didn't want them to lose their jobs. They were asst profs and needed to support their families. So, he took the heat.