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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.

Claude Bernard

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Claude Bernard
Age: 64 †
Born: 1813
Born: July 12
Died: 1878
Died: February 10
Physician Writer
Physiologist
Politician
Professor
Psychologist
Men
Teaching
Primaries
Like
Results
Primary
Causes
Relations
Forever
Objectives
Science
Hidden
Lessening
Reality
Relation
Proving
Every
Pride
Experimental
Things
Prove
Objective

More quotes by Claude Bernard

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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
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A discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Claude Bernard
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The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
Claude Bernard
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True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.
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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
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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
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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
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It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.
Claude Bernard
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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
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The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
Claude Bernard
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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.
Claude Bernard
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Science rejects the indeterminate.
Claude Bernard
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We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.
Claude Bernard
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Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.
Claude Bernard
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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
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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
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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