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We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.

Claude Bernard

When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Abandonment Acceptance Believe Conflict Fact Intuition Support Theory
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

Kitchen Life Light Reach Science
The 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 BERNARD

Beautiful Imagination Ourselves Science Truth
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

Determination Fact Goal Reason Reduce Science
The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Compare Requirement Statistics Treat
Science rejects the indeterminate.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Determination Rejection Science
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Delicate Live Mechanism Organism Property Wonderful
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Experiment Forever Man Reality Relation Science Teaching
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Afraid Direction Fear Ground Ideas Mistake Modesty Risk
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Experiment Himself Seek True Worth
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Active Creation Experiment Head Limitation Nature Progress Science
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Character Clear Creation Expression Life Science
It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Deep Knowledge Learning Ourselves Prevent
The investigator should have a robust faith – and yet not believe.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Believe Faith Investigate
We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Confirm Control Experiment Simplicity
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

Body Environment Freedom Independence Live Medium Stability

We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain.

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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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