Particular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.
CLAUDE BERNARDParticular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.
CLAUDE BERNARDWe must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.
CLAUDE BERNARDWhen 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.
CLAUDE BERNARDThe experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
CLAUDE BERNARDThe 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 BERNARDIn the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.
CLAUDE BERNARDBut while I accept specialization in the practice, I reject it utterly in the theory of science.
CLAUDE BERNARDA fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.
CLAUDE BERNARDA 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. ‘
CLAUDE BERNARDMan can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.
CLAUDE BERNARDFeeling alone guides the mind.
CLAUDE BERNARDObervation is a passive science, experimentation is an active science.
CLAUDE BERNARDThe 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 BERNARDTrue science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.
CLAUDE BERNARDWe 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.
CLAUDE BERNARDPut off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave.
CLAUDE BERNARD