The Brain and Behavior 75
ducted, some along the lines of the research described above
in attempts to specify more precisely those neurological vari-
ables, others exploring new kinds of variables, biochemical
and electrical as well as physiological. Eccles, commenting
on a paper which reviewed the “Early development of ideas
relating the mind with the brain” (Magoun, 1958), remarked
as follows: “Prof. Magoun has been very subtle in presenting
us with his paper, because it shows how intimately our think-
ing is dependent upon what is known anatomically. It is a
warning for us. Here we have seen the attempt to fit func-
tion to the cπιde anatomy which was all these physiologists
had in those days; and they could only fit crude functional
interpretations. Do we still err so remarkably? In some
hundreds of years’ time, will our present concepts look so
archaic, simply because we are still fitting them to the only
anatomy we have, which is what the anatomists give us? In
the nervous system, we physiologists are more dependent
upon what the anatomists tell us than we are anywhere else.
Have we finally reached some of the basic levels of anatomy
upon which we can securely build, e.g., the neurone, the
synapse and all the more detailed material which is now
coming with electron microscopy? Is this in turn to be super-
seded, and are we to look archaic? It is a very sobering
thought” (Wolstenholme & O’Connor, 1958, p. 24).
Lashley’s comments on the relations between brain and
behavior viewed in the context of phylogenetic studies are
also pertinent: “When comparing the brains and the be-
havior of animals at different levels in the phylogenetic scale,
I have been much puzzled by the lack of significant corre-
spondences. The brains of insect, cephalopod, bird, and
mammal are as unlike in gross structure and arrangement
as one can well imagine. Yet these animals show essentially
the same fundamental types of behavior. They all learn, and