Claude Bernard - Fact Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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

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
A great surgeon performs operations for stone by a single method; later he makes a statistical summary of deaths and recoveries, and he concludes from these statistics that the mortality law for this operation is two out of five. Well, I say that this ratio means literally nothing scientifically and gives us no certainty in performing the next operation; for we do not know whether the next case will be among the recoveries or the deaths. What really should be done, instead of gathering facts empirically, is to study them more accurately, each in its special determinism…. to discover in them the cause of mortal accidents so as to master the cause and avoid the accidents.

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

Claude Bernard
Facts are neither great nor small in themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

Claude Bernard
Pile up facts or observations as we may, we shall be none the wiser. To learn, we must necessarily reason about what we have observed, compare the facts and judge them by other facts used as controls.

Claude Bernard
Facts never exclude one another, they are simply explained by differences in the conditions in which they are born.

Claude Bernard
When one calls a new fact a discovery, the fact itself is not a discovery, but rather the new idea derived from it...

Claude Bernard
Theories are only verified 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.

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…. 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
When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.

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.

Claude Bernard