Mechanisms of Experience
Cognitivism, Cybernetics, and the Postwar Science of Pain
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4176320 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Soleiman (University of California San Diego, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 116 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 23-42 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Isis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/733955 |
| OpenAlex | W4407686848 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 49 |
In the early to mid-1960s, Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed gate control theory, the most enduring theory of pain of the twentieth century. Challenging the notion of pain as a pure sensation of injury, Melzack and Wall refigured bodily experience as a dynamic state of the entire nervous system, including the higher levels of the brain. Within a decade, their neurophysiological model had become the conceptual foundation for the burgeoning and multidisciplinary field of pain medicine. This essay excavates the conditions of possibility for the invention of gate control theory. It shows how two intellectual cultures emerging across the postwar neuro and psy disciplines—namely, cognitivism and cybernetics—converged in a holistic understanding of patients’ reported experiences. In reframing gate control theory, this story reveals how postwar scientists were able to construct a vision of an integrated, post-Cartesian self
Autopoiesis · Cognition · Cognitive science · Cognitivism (psychology · Cybernetics · Epistemology · Neurophenomenology · Sociology · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · Neuroscience · Philosophical and Theoretical Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments
The Closed World
The Cybernetics Group
On perceptual readiness.
Pain Mechanisms: A New Theory
A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity
The Psychology and Management of Pain
Reenchanted Science
How disunity matters to the history of cybernetics in the human sciences in the United States, 1940–80
Ghastly marionettes’ and the political metaphysics of cognitive liberalism
Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity
Warren S. McCulloch and his Circle
Technologies of Expertise
On Pain as a Distinct Sensation
From Logical Neurons to Poetic Embodiments of Mind
The Sleeping Beauty of the Brain
Monkeys, Mirrors, and Me
Understanding the ?cognitive revolution? in psychology
A Neurotic Dog's Life
The Body Multiple
Transcending the dualisms
The Future Will Not Be Calculated
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |