Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard
Claude Bernardwas a French physiologist. Historian Ierome Bernard Cohen of Harvard University called Bernard "one of the greatest of all men of science". Among many other accomplishments, he was one of the first to suggest the use of blind experiments to ensure the objectivity of scientific observations. He originated the term milieu intérieur, and the associated concept of homeostasis...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth12 July 1813
CityRhone, France
CountryFrance
teaching pride reality
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.
doe permit exception
Science does not permit exceptions.
science discovery should
Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.
believe science men
I do not ... reject the use of statistics in medicine, but I condemn not trying to get beyond them and believing in statistics as the foundation of medical science. ... Statistics ... apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still [uncertain or] indeterminate. ... There will always be some indeterminism ... in all the sciences, and more in medicine than in any other. But man's intellectual conquest consists in lessening and driving back indeterminism in proportion as he gains ground for determinism by the help of the experimental method..
science men ideas
Men who have excessive faith in their theories ... 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
ideas experiments
Il ne fallait jamais faire des expériences pour confirmer ses idées, mais simplement pour les contrôler. We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.
science firsts facts
The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units.
science statistics succeed
In the patient who succumbed, the cause of death was evidently something which was not found in the patient who recovered; this something we must determine, and then we can act on the phenomena or recognize and foresee them accurately. But not by statistics shall we succeed in this; never have statistics taught anything, and never can they teach anything about the nature of the phenomenon.
science causes doe
Proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear.
science self mind
The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.
science numbers progress
Progress is achieved by exchanging our theories for new ones which go further than the old, until we find one based on a larger number of facts. ... Theories are only hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed.
freedom medicine mind
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.
drug poison matter
Tout est poison, rien n'est poison, tout est une question de dose. Everything is poisonous, nothing is poisonous, it is all a matter of dose.
believe mind intellectual
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.