Mental testing and machine intelligence: The Lashley-Hull debate

Karl Lashley and Clark Hull had a long and unresolved controversy about the structure and function of the brain, its relationship to the mind, and the use of machine metaphors to explain intelligence. Though on the surface their debate was not about the relative importance of heredity or environment in determining intelligence and behavior, this is the subtext that ran through their exchanges. A determined hereditarian, Lashley was committed, both intellectually and institutionally, to the integration of biology and psychology. But Hull believed that environmentally-shaped reflex connections underlay behavior and that this law made psychology the most basic of the social sciences.