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Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.

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
Observation
Experiments
Active
Science
Experimentation
Passive

More quotes by Claude Bernard

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The eloquence of a scientist is clarity scientific truth is always more luminous when its beauty is unadorned than when it is tricked out in the embellishments with which our imagination would seek to clothe it.
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Proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear.
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Progress is achieved by exchanging our theories for new ones which go further than the old, until we find one based on a larger number of facts. ... Theories are only 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.
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The stability of the internal medium is a primary condition for the freedom and independence of certain living bodies in relation to the environment surrounding them.
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. '
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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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Science rejects the indeterminate.
Claude Bernard
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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.
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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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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.
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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
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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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We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.
Claude Bernard
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Hatred is the most clear- sighted, next to genius.
Claude Bernard
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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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Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.
Claude Bernard
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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
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The mental never influences the physical. It is always the physical that modifies the mental, and when we think that the mind is diseased, it is always an illusion.
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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Science admits no exceptions otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.
Claude Bernard