Anticipation: learning from the past. The Russian/Soviet contributions to the science of anticipation

Abstract

The focus on Russian/Soviet contributions is only an opportunity to understand the objective premises of anticipation. Since anticipation expresses a main concept characterizing human action, it is important to see whether and how it corresponds to the neuro-physiology of the human. The aim of this review is to show that anticipation is neuro-physiologically constitutive and is intertwined with all other reflective, cognitive, and coordinative functions that form an inseparable unity in the process of adaptation. The experiments described in the book draw attention to anticipation as the internal tendency of the living that cannot be ignored. The review highlights the dialectic of continuity and discontinuity in the living from the standpoint of anticipation, and the holistic conclusions of the scientific research regarding the living and the human being.

Keywords:

• Anticipation
• neuro-physiology
• learning
• psychology
• consciousness
• cognition
• behavior

Acknowledgments

This text was not supported by any agency, and does not entail any financial benefit to the author.

Notes

1. In early philosophies of psychology and metaphysics, conatus (Latin for “effort; endeavor; impulse, inclination, tendency; undertaking; striving”) is an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus).

2. The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was granted to Edvard Moser, May-Britt Moser, and John O’Keefe for research in how animals navigate in space and keep track of their position (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v515/n7525/full/515037c.html#close).