BNW2 - Allusion

"Infant Nurseries. Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Rooms, announced the notice board." (Brave New World, pg. 19) Ah-ha! This notice board is a reference to a well-known Russian scientist, Ivan Pavlov, who discovered the use of conditioned reflexes. A conditioned reflex is such that an animal (humans are animals) will respond in a certain way after a recurring stimulus. For example, Pavlov trained a dog to drool for food when it heard a bell. This was done by ringing a bell every time the dog was fed. So, after numerous repetition, the bell was rung without food, and the dog began salivating all over the floor. We see this exact training performed by the hatchery to the humans. While it is unrealistic that this time of training would still be performed in this advanced society (it would be easier, and more scientific of them to simply mutate the DNA of the specimens), it would be an effective, yet cruel, way of training humans. However, I will forgive Mr. Huxley for his blunder because the truth about DNA had yet to be fully realized. Even today we don't understand all that it contains.