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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

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

Average Darkness Greatness Knowledge Man Recognition Science
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Excess Faith Ideas Observation Poor Theory
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
Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Anand Thakur
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
The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Experiment Himself Philosophy Research Understand
A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Attachment Evidence Fact Ideas Value
A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Fragment Man Rise Science Seek Truth
Particular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Establishment Fact General Science
Everything is poisonous, nothing is poisonous, it is all a matter of dose.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Amount Poison Portion
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Condition Force Law Manifestation State
Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Learning Man Unknown
In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Experiment Observation Philosophy Teaching
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
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 BERNARD

Absurd Believe Freedom Impossible Mindset Nature
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

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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