We must keep our freedom of mind, and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.
CLAUDE BERNARDScience rejects the indeterminate.
More Claude Bernard Quotes
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We must remain, in a word, in an intellectual disposition which seems paradoxical, but which, in my opinion, represents the true mind of the investigator. We must have a robust faith and yet not believe.
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First causes are outside the realm of science.
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Experiment is fundamentally only induced observation.
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Obervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.
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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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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.
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The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek.
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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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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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With the aid of these active experimental sciences man becomes an inventor of phenomena, a real foreman of creation; and under this head we cannot set limits to the power that he may gain over nature through future progress of the experimental sciences.
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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.
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In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.
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The terrain is everything; the germ is nothing.
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Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.
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Everything is poisonous, nothing is poisonous, it is all a matter of dose.
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The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.
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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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Those who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries, but they also make very poor observations.
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Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.
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A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.
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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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But while I accept specialization in the practice, I reject it utterly in the theory of science.
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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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When entering on new ground we must not be afraid to express even risky ideas so as to stimulate research in all directions. As Priestley put it, we must not remain inactive through false modesty based on fear of being mistaken.
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The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.
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In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.
CLAUDE BERNARD