Claude Bernard Quotes

Science rejects the indeterminate.

The basic idea of Western science is that you don't have to take into account the falling of a leaf on some planet in another galaxy when you're trying to account for the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table on earth. Very small influences can be neglected. There's a convergence in the way things work, and arbitrarily small influences don't blow up to have arbitrarily large effects.

The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.

Science does not permit exceptions.

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.

Science is the ultimate tool to reveal the laws of nature, and the one word written on its banner is Truth.

The wonderful thing about science is that in science, faith is shakable.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired

Music is science. Everything is science. Because science is truth.

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of Nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.

Every choice you make has a consequence, every one. It's mathematic. It cannot fail; it never fails.

Rule of science: only exclude purpose, and Nature will reveal her causes.

There are three creative ideas which, each in its turn, have been central to science. They are the idea of order, the idea of causes, and the idea of chance.

Everything, including that which happens in our brains, depends on these and only on these: A set of fixed, deterministic laws.

Science can't tell you why anything happens.

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

One of the nice things about math and science is it’s obvious, you get the answer or you don’t get the answer.

Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.

If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do.

There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.

I have established Laws in the universe that make it possible for you to have-to create-exactly what you choose. These Laws cannot be violated, nor can they be ignored. You are following these Laws right now, even as you read this. You cannot not follow the Law, for these are the ways things work. You cannot step aside from this; you cannot operate outside of it.

Science is the most intimate school of resignation and humility, for it teaches us to bow before the seemingly most insignificant of facts.