Claude Bernard Quotes

All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.

A modern poet has characterized the personality of art and the impersonality of science as follows: Art is I: Science is We.

Leçons sur les Phénomènes de la Vie Communs aux Animaux et aux Végétaux (1878-1879).

We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.

Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations.

Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.

[A] living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine.

[T]hey make poor observations, because they choose among the results of their experiments only what suits their object, neglecting whatever is unrelated to it, and carefully setting aside everything which might tend toward the idea they wish to combat.

If I had to define life in a word, it would be: Life is creation.

[P]articular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.

A great surgeon performs operations for stone by a single method; later he makes a statistical summary of deaths and recoveries, and he concludes from these statistics that the mortality law for this operation is two out of five. Well, I say that this ratio means literally nothing scientifically and gives us no certainty in performing the next operation; for we do not know whether the next case will be among the recoveries or the deaths. What really should be done, instead of gathering facts empirically, is to study them more accurately, each in its special determinism. We must study cases of death with great care and try to discover in them the cause of mortal accidents so as to master the cause and avoid the accidents.

Considered in itself, the experimental method is nothing but reasoning by whose help we methodically submit our ideas to experience,—the experience of facts.

Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.

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."

Ardent desire for knowledge, in fact, is the one motive attracting and supporting investigators in their efforts; and just this knowledge, really grasped and yet always flying before them, becomes at once their sole torment and sole happiness.… [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.