Quote

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.

Claude Bernard

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Claude Bernard
Age: 64 †
Born: 1813
Born: July 12
Died: 1878
Died: February 10
Physician Writer
Physiologist
Politician
Professor
Psychologist
Science
Doe
Experimenter
Finds
Looking
Understand

More quotes by Claude Bernard

Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.
Claude Bernard
Image
The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
Claude Bernard
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The terrain is everything the germ is nothing.
Claude Bernard
Image
The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel.
Claude Bernard
Image
The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.
Claude Bernard
Image
All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.
Claude Bernard
Image
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
Image
Science rejects the indeterminate.
Claude Bernard
Image
We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.
Claude Bernard
Image
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
Image
Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.
Claude Bernard
Image
We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.
Claude Bernard
Image
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.
Claude Bernard
Image
A discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.
Claude Bernard
Image
Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.
Claude Bernard
Image
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