Claude Bernard Quotes

121 Sourced Quotes

To conserve health and to cure disease: Medicine is still pursuing a scientific solution of this problem, which has confronted it from the first.

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

Claude Bernard
The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.

Claude Bernard
God forbid that Truth should be Confined to Mathematical Demonstration. He who does not know Truth at sight is unworthy of Her Notice.

Claude Bernard
Experimentation is, properly speaking, nothing more than the decomposition of a phenomenon into its elements. One removes them in succession, and observes what is lacking, in order to identify the role of each of these elements in the total production of the phenomenon.

Claude Bernard
If the facts used as a basis of reasoning are ill-established or erroneous, everything will crumble or be falsified; and it is thus that errors in scientific theories most often originate in errors of fact.

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.

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.

Claude Bernard
The nature of our mind leads us to seek the essence or the why of things.

Claude Bernard
The science of vital phenomena must have the same foundations as the science of phenomena of inorganic bodies, and... there is no difference in this respect between the principles of biological science and those of physico-chemical science.

Claude Bernard
General physiology is the basic biological science toward which all others converge.

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.

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.

Claude Bernard
Only within very narrow boundaries can man observe the phenomena which surround him; most of them naturally escape his senses, and mere observation is not enough.

Claude Bernard
The application of mathematics to natural phenomena is the aim of all science.

Claude Bernard
We may, of course strike a balance between what a living organism takes in as nourishment and what it gives out in excretions.... This would be like trying to tell what happens inside a house by watching what goes in by the door and what comes out by the chimney.

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.

Claude Bernard
An experimenter can never deny a fact that he has seen and observed, merely because he cannot rediscover it.

Claude Bernard
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
First causes are outside the realm of science; they forever escape us in the sciences of living as well as in those of inorganic bodies.

Claude Bernard
We must not deceive ourselves: morals do not forbid making experiments on one's neighbour or one's self; in everyday life, men do nothing but experiment on one another.

Claude Bernard
Another very frequent application of mathematics to biology is the use of averages which, in medicine and physiology, leads, so to speak, necessarily to error... By destroying the biological character of phenomena, the use of averages in physiology and medicine usually give only apparent accuracy to the results.

Claude Bernard
But physicians have nothing to do with what is called the law of large numbers, a law which, according to a great mathematician's expression, is always true in general and false in particular.

Claude Bernard
Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.

Claude Bernard
There are people who seek to find truth, but there are those who seek above all to uncover the errors of their contemporaries.

Claude Bernard
Facts are neither great nor small in themselves.

Claude Bernard
The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units.

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

Claude Bernard
Reasoning will always be correct when applied to accurate notions and precise facts; but it can lead only to error when the notions or facts on which it rests were originally tainted with error or inaccuracy.

Claude Bernard
One of the greatest obstacles to the free and universal movement of human knowledge is the tendency that leads different kinds of knowledge to separate into systems.

Claude Bernard