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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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Claude Bernard
Age: 64 †
Born: 1813
Born: July 12
Died: 1878
Died: February 10
Physician Writer
Physiologist
Politician
Professor
Psychologist
Time
Constitutes
Endlessly
Torment
Grasp
Knowledge
Happiness
Recedes
Fact
Investigator
Facts
Investigators

More quotes by Claude Bernard

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True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.
Claude Bernard
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Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.
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.
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Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge. It is in the darker. It is in the darker regions of science that great men are recognized they are marked by ideas which light up phenomena hitherto obscure and carry science forward.
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Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge
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Science rejects the indeterminate.
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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
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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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Science admits no exceptions otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.
Claude Bernard
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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.
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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The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.
Claude Bernard
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In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.
Claude Bernard
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Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.
Claude Bernard
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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.
Claude Bernard
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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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Science does not permit exceptions.
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 experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
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.
Claude Bernard