Best 76 quotes of Claude Bernard on MyQuotes

Claude Bernard

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    A contemporary poet has characterized this sense of the personality of art and of the impersonality of science in these words,-'Art is myself; science is ourselves. '

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    A discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    A great discovery is a fact whose appearance in science gives rise to shining ideas, whose light dispels many obscurities and shows us new paths.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Ardent desire for knowledge, in fact, is the one motive attracting and supporting investigators in their efforts; and just this knowledge, really grasped and yet always flying before them, becomes at once their sole torment and their sole happiness. Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery which is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Art is 'I'; science is 'we'.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    As soon as the circumstances of an experiment are well known, we stop gathering statistics. ... The effect will occur always without exception, because the cause of the phenomena is accurately defined. Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined,Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined, can we compile statistics. ... we must learn therefore that we compile statistics only when we cannot possibly help it; for in my opinion, statistics can never yield scientific truth.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    But while I accept specialization in the practice, I reject it utterly in the theory of science.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Descriptive anatomy is to physiology what geography is to history, and just as it is not enough to know the typography of a country to understand its history, so also it is not enough to know the anatomy of organs to understand their functions.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Effects vary with the conditions which bring them to pass, but laws do not vary. Physiological and pathological states are ruled by the same forces; they differ only because of the special conditions under which the vital laws manifest themselves.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Even mistaken hypotheses and theories are of use in leading to discoveries. This remark is true in all the sciences. The alchemists founded chemistry by pursuing chimerical problems and theories which are false. In physical science, which is more advanced than biology, we might still cite men of science who make great discoveries by relying on false theories.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Feeling alone guides the mind.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    First causes are outside the realm of science.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    I do not ... reject the use of statistics in medicine, but I condemn not trying to get beyond them and believing in statistics as the foundation of medical science. ... Statistics ... apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still [uncertain or] indeterminate. ... There will always be some indeterminism ... in all the sciences, and more in medicine than in any other. But man's intellectual conquest consists in lessening and driving back indeterminism in proportion as he gains ground for determinism by the help of the experimental method.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    If I had to define life in a single phrase, I should clearly express my thought of throwing into relief one characteristic which, in my opinion, sharply differentiates biological science. I should say: life is creation.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Il ne fallait jamais faire des expériences pour confirmer ses idées, mais simplement pour les contrôler. We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    In a word, I consider hospitals only as the entrance to scientific medicine; they are the first field of observation which a physician enters; but the true sanctuary of medical science is a laboratory; only there can he seek explanations of life in the normal and pathological states by means of experimental analysis.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    In every enterprise ... the mind is always reasoning, and, even when we seem to act without a motive, an instinctive logic still directs the mind. Only we are not aware of it, because we begin by reasoning before we know or say that we are reasoning, just as we begin by speaking before we observe that we are speaking, and just as we begin by seeing and hearing before we know what we see or what we hear.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of things, will be hidden from him forever and that he can only know relations.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    In the patient who succumbed, the cause of death was evidently something which was not found in the patient who recovered; this something we must determine, and then we can act on the phenomena or recognize and foresee them accurately. But not by statistics shall we succeed in this; never have statistics taught anything, and never can they teach anything about the nature of the phenomenon.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    In these researches I followed the principles of the experimental method that we have established, i.e., that, in presence of a well-noted, new fact which contradicts a theory, instead of keeping the theory and abandoning the fact, I should keep and study the fact, and I hastened to give up the theory.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    It has often been said that, to make discoveries, one must be ignorant. This opinion, mistaken in itself, nevertheless conceals a truth. It means that it is better to know nothing than to keep in mind fixed ideas based on theories whose confirmation we constantly seek, neglecting meanwhile everything that fails to agree with them.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    It is impossible to devise an experiment without a preconceived idea; devising an experiment, we said, is putting a question; we never conceive a question without an idea which invites an answer. I consider it, therefore, an absolute principle that experiments must always be devised in view of a preconceived idea, no matter if the idea be not very clear nor very well defined.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Laplace considers astronomy a science of observation, because we can only observe the movements of the planets; we cannot reach them, indeed, to alter their course and to experiment with them. "On earth," said Laplace, "we make phenomena vary by experiments; in the sky, we carefully define all the phenomena presented to us by celestial motion." Certain physicians call medicine a science of observations, because they wrongly think that experimentation is inapplicable to it.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Man does not limit himself to seeing; he thinks and insists on learning the meaning of phenomena whose existence has been revealed to him by observation. So he reasons, compares facts, puts questions to them, and by the answers which he extracts, tests one by another. This sort of control, by means of reasoning and facts, is what constitutes experiment, properly speaking; and it is the only process that we have for teaching ourselves about the nature of things outside us.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge. It is in the darker. It is in the darker regions of science that great men are recognized; they are marked by ideas which light up phenomena hitherto obscure and carry science forward.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So ... these despisers of their fellows ... make experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of to seek the truth.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Men who have excessive faith in their theories ... make poor observations, because they choose among the results of their experiments only what suits their object, neglecting whatever is unrelated to it and carefully setting aside everything which might tend toward the idea they wish to combat

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results,only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Our ideas are only intellectual instruments which we use to break into phenomena; we must change them when they have served their purpose, as we change a blunt lancet that we have used long enough.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Particular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Progress is achieved by exchanging our theories for new ones which go further than the old, until we find one based on a larger number of facts. ... Theories are only hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Real science exists, then, only from the moment when a phenomenon is accurately defined as to its nature and rigorously determined in relation to its material conditions, that is, when its law is known. Before that, we have only groping and empiricism.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    The better educated we are and the more acquired information we have, the better prepared shall we find our minds for making great and fruitful discoveries.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for free and independent life: the mechanism that makes it possible is that which assured the maintenance, with the internal environment, of all the conditions necessary for the life of the elements.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    The eloquence of a scientist is clarity; scientific truth is always more luminous when its beauty is unadorned than when it is tricked out in the embellishments with which our imagination would seek to clothe it.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    The fact that knowledge endlessly recedes as the investigator is about to grasp it is what constitutes at the same time his torment and happiness.

  • By Anonym
    Claude Bernard

    The first entirely vital action, so termed because it is not effected outside the influence of life, consists in the creation of the glycogenic material in the living hepatic tissue. The second entirely chemical action, which can be effected outside the influence of life, consists in the transformation of the glycogenic material into sugar by means of a ferment.