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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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Claude Bernard
Age: 64 †
Born: 1813
Born: July 12
Died: 1878
Died: February 10
Physician Writer
Physiologist
Politician
Professor
Psychologist
Ideas
Served
Enough
Instruments
Must
Intellectual
Long
Break
Purpose
Use
Lancet
Change
Blunt
Used
Phenomena

More quotes by Claude Bernard

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All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.
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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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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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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.
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The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
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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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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.
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A discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.
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Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.
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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.
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Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.
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We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.
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Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge
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First causes are outside the realm of science.
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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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The terrain is everything the germ is nothing.
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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.
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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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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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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