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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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Claude Bernard
Age: 64 †
Born: 1813
Born: July 12
Died: 1878
Died: February 10
Physician Writer
Physiologist
Politician
Professor
Psychologist
Causes
Phenomenon
Accompanies
Science
Certainty
Warrant
Given
Appear
Precedes
Stills
Condition
Warrants
Doe
Proof
Accompany
Still
Conditions
Removed
Must
Cause
Immediate
Always
Longer
Established
Concluding

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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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.
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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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Science does not permit exceptions.
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It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.
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The terrain is everything the germ is nothing.
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We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.
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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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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.
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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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True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.
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 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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We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.
Claude Bernard
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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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Science rejects the indeterminate.
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