Claude Bernard Quotes

121 Sourced Quotes

I believe, in a word, that the true scientific method confines the mind without suffocating it, leaves it as far as possible face to face with itself, and guides it, while respecting the creative originality and the spontaneity which are its most precious qualities.

Claude Bernard
Men sometimes seem to confuse experiment with observation.

Claude Bernard
All those who restrict themselves to speaking of experimentation from the fireside do nothing for science; rather they harm it.

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

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.

Claude Bernard
Observation, then, is what shows facts.; experiment is what teaches about facts and gives experience in relation to anything.

Claude Bernard
Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined, can we compile; we must learn, therefore, that we compile statistics only when we cannot possibly help it.

Claude Bernard
Do not confuse theory with law. Law is scientific, theory is nothing but the subjectivity of the facts.

Claude Bernard
Considered in itself, the experimental method is nothing but reasoning by whose help we methodically submit our ideas to experience — the experience of fact.

Claude Bernard
An experiment is fundamentally just an observation induced with some object or another.

Claude Bernard
I do not understand how we can teach practical and exact science on the basis of statistics.

Claude Bernard
We must keep our freedom of mind,... and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.

Claude Bernard
If an idea presents itself to us, we must not reject it simply because it does not agree with the logical deductions of a reigning theory.

Claude Bernard
Our feelings lead us at first to believe that absolute truth must lie within our realm; but study takes from us, little by little, these chimerical conceits.

Claude Bernard
The goal of scientific physicians in their own science... is to reduce the indeterminate. Statistics therefore apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still indeterminate.

Claude Bernard
Men of science, then, do not seek for the pleasure of seeking; they seek the truth to possess it, and they possess it already within the limits expressed in the present state of science.

Claude Bernard
If we mean to build up the biological sciences, and to study fruitfully the complex phenomena which occur in living beings, whether in the physiological or the pathological state, we must first of all lay down principles of experimentation, and then apply them to physiology, pathology and therapeutics.

Claude Bernard
Medical personality is placed above science by physicians themselves; they seek their authority in tradition, in doctrines or in medical tact. This state of affairs is the clearest of proofs that the experimental method has by no means come into its own in medicine.

Claude Bernard
Good methods can teach us to develop and use to better purpose the faculties with which nature has endowed us, while poor methods may prevent us from turning them to good account. Thus the genius of inventiveness, so precious in the sciences, may be diminished or even smothered by a poor method, while a good method may increase and develop it.

Claude Bernard
A fact is nothing in itself, it has value only through the idea connected with it or through the proof it supplies.

Claude Bernard
An anticipative idea or an hypothesis is, then, the necessary starting point for all experimental reasoning. Without it, we could not make any investigation at all nor learn anything; we could only pile up sterile observations. If we experiment without a preconceived idea, we should move at random...

Claude Bernard
Science has just the privilege of teaching us what we do not know, by replacing feeling with reason and experience and clearly showing us the present boundaries of our knowledge.

Claude Bernard
Experimentation is undeniably harder in medicine than in any other science; but for that very reason, it was never so necessary, and indeed so indispensable.

Claude Bernard
Men of science must not halt on the road; they must climb ever higher and strive toward perfection; they must always seek as long as they see anything to be found.

Claude Bernard
There must be a general idea to verify; without that there is no scientist.

Claude Bernard
Science is like a rope that we hold by one end, which we see. The other end is in the water and is attached to the unknown.

Claude Bernard
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
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.

Claude Bernard
A physiologist is not a man of fashion, he is a man of science, absorbed by the scientific idea which he pursues: he no longer hears the cry of animals, he no longer sees the blood that flows, he sees only his idea and perceives only organisms concealing problems which he intends to solve.

Claude Bernard
It is generally agreed that synthesis reunites what analysis has divided, and that synthesis therefore verifies analysis, of which it is merely the counterproof or necessary complement.

Claude Bernard