Claude Bernard Quotes - Page 3

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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.

Claude Bernard

Real, Science, Law

Claude Bernard “Experimental Medicine”, Transaction Publishers

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

Claude Bernard

Would Be, Determinism, Exception

"Leçons de Pathologie Expérimentale". Book by Claude Bernard, 1872.

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Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.

Claude Bernard

Science, Climbing, Horizon

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.185, Courier Corporation

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The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.

Claude Bernard

Freedom, Science, Medicine

Claude Bernard “Experimental Medicine”, Transaction Publishers

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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.

Claude Bernard

Knowledge, Science, Men

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.70, Courier Corporation

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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.

Claude Bernard

Science, Imagination, Laboratory

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Well-observed facts, though brought to light by passing theories, will never die; they are the material on which alone the house of science will at last be built.

Claude Bernard

Death, Science, Light

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.186, Courier Corporation

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

Claude Bernard

Practice, Accepting, Theory

Claude Bernard “Experimental Medicine”, Transaction Publishers

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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.

Claude Bernard

Science, Law, Special

Claude Bernard “Experimental Medicine”, Transaction Publishers

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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.

Claude Bernard

Life, Independent, Science

Claude Bernard (1974). “Lectures on the phenomena of life common to animals and plants”, Charles C Thomas Pub Ltd

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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.

Claude Bernard

Facts, Torment, Investigators

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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.

Claude Bernard

Science, Views, Ideas

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.52, Courier Corporation

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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.

Claude Bernard

Mistake, Science, Men

"An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine".

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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.

Claude Bernard

Mean, Tissues, Sugar

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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.

Claude Bernard

Ideas, Experiments

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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.

Claude Bernard

Mean, Science, Machines

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.90, Courier Corporation

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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.

Claude Bernard

Science, Thinking, Sky

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.47, Courier Corporation

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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.

Claude Bernard

Science, Men, Rising

Claude Bernard “Experimental Medicine”, Transaction Publishers

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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.

Claude Bernard

Life, Mean, Science

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.168, Courier Corporation

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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. '

Claude Bernard

Art, Science, Personality

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.71, Courier Corporation

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With the aid of these active experimental sciences man becomes an inventor of phenomena, a real foreman of creation; and under this head we cannot set limits to the power that he may gain over nature through future progress of the experimental sciences.

Claude Bernard

Real, Science, Men

Claude Bernard “Experimental Medicine”, Transaction Publishers

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Science rejects the indeterminate.

Claude Bernard

Rejects

1865 An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, vol.1, ch.1, section 3 (translated by H C Greene).

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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.

Claude Bernard

Learning, Knowledge, Science

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.159, Courier Corporation

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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.

Claude Bernard

Giving Up, Science, Principles

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.184, Courier Corporation

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When a physician is called to a patient, he should decide on the diagnosis, then the prognosis, and then the treatment. ... Physicians must know the evolution of the disease, its duration and gravity in order to predict its course and outcome. Here statistics intervene to guide physicians, by teaching them the proportion of mortal cases, and if observation has also shown that the successful and unsuccessful cases can be recognized by certain signs, then the prognosis is more certain.

Claude Bernard

Teaching, Successful, Science

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.231, Courier Corporation

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Born: July 12, 1813
Died: February 10, 1878
Occupation: Physiologist
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