I always found Pavlov's experiment thoroughly boring. I could never understand why it was such a big deal - it just seems obvious. But this rectangle thing is really subtle and interesting.
The year was 1890. Only 15 years ago did Koch prove for the first time that diseases were caused by germs. Most of the world still believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The scientific consensus was that "ether" pervaded all of space. Men of stature made confident pronouncements that nothing man-made would ever fly.
Almost everything is obvious in retrospect. And being boring is not a strike against a scientific hypothesis.
Your list seems to me to affirm my point. None of the things you mention strike me as boring and obvious, and I have a lot of respect for 1890. Lectures in scientific piety, not so much.
But as long as we're butting heads about this, perhaps you can clear up something I was wondering. The article says:
[Pavlov] showed that a physical connection can be created between a stimulus (the bell sound) and the following behavior (the dog's salivation) with no cognitive interaction.
My question: is that last bit - "with no cognitive interaction" - the received interpretation of Pavlov's result, or was it just added by the author?
Almost everything is obvious in retrospect. And being boring is not a strike against a scientific hypothesis.