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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.

Claude Bernard

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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Doubt Experiment Freedom Greatness Leave Medicine Mindset Principle Virtue
Put 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

Imagination Leaving Science Yourself
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
We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Confirm Control Experiment Simplicity
We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.‎
CLAUDE BERNARD

Adapt Nature Theory
Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Discover Hard Time Joy Struggle
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Greatness Mindset Rise Satisfaction Strive
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.
CLAUDE BERNARD

Believe Faith Intellectual Opinion Word
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. ‘
CLAUDE BERNARD

Art Character Ourselves Personality Poet Science

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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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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