I think as a theorist of learning (and possibly of perception),
D. O. Hebb was well known and respected from, say, 1949.
The trouble was that his version of the Conceptual Nervous
System was then unproductive in the matter of generating
unique, testable hypotheses. (Skinner seems to have invented
this "CNS," but building a theoretical structure out of it was a
very un-Skinnerian thing to do.) At best, I think the players
at the time would have put Hebb's work in the same category as
Tolman's 'vectors' -- interesting, but not really able, as a mechanism,
to generate observable behaviour. Hebb stuck to cell-assemblies
and the like through thick and thin, mostly thin, for whatever
reason. In retrospect (again, rather like Tolman), some of Hebb's
ideas -- esp. "the Hebb synapse" -- seem prophetic, but so do
Jeanne Dixon's. Other work by Hebb, equally original, is best
ignored. -- e.g., I suspect that the isolation experiments were
an exercise in demand characteristics. ( I once got trashed for
saying that to somebody who turned out to be a student of
Hebb's. It was an interview. I didn't get the job.)
I think Hebb gets just about the right amount of 'historical credit' --
considerably less than Clark Hull or Tolman or Skinner -- rankable,
say, with or just below the (even more ignored) O. H. Mowrer in
the 'early days' and N. S. Sutherland later on.
Extra-experimentally, Hebb was important for McGill and for
Canadian Psychology generally, by jingo, but I'll leave the
jingoism to somebody else.* A nice man, an entertaining speaker
the single time I heard him, c. 1973, but perhaps not for Intro
students at McGill -- my wife was one of those in 60-61 and
Donald Hebb drove her away from Psychology and into...
wait for it... gulp... Sociology!
-David
*I'm from the same town (Saint John, N. B.) as Benedict
Arnold, but I figure it could go either way. -D.
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David G. Likely, Department of Psychology,
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, N. B., E3B 5A3 Canada
History of Psychology:
http://www.unb.ca/psychology/likely/psyc4053.htm
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