Claude Bernard Quotes

In world history man’s actions result in something quite different from what he purposes or intends.

Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.

If one in twenty does not seem high enough odds, we may, if we prefer it, draw the line at one in fifty (the 2 per cent. point), or one in a hundred (the 1 per cent. point). Personally, the writer prefers to set a low standard of significance at the 5 per cent. point, and ignore entirely all results which fail to reach this level. A scientific fact should be regarded as experimentally established only if a properly designed experiment rarely fails to give this level of significance.

Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.

Science values static patterns.

... the actual and physical conduct of an experiment must govern the statistical procedure of its interpretation.

Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography.

Statistics is, or should be, about scientific investigation and how to do it better, but many statisticians believe it is a branch of mathematics. Now I agree that the physicist, the chemist, the engineer, and the statistician can never know too much mathematics, but their objectives should be better physics, better chemistry, better engineering, and in the case of statistics, better scientific investigation. Whether in any given study this implies more or less mathematics is incidental.

With science, ideas can germinate within a bed of theory, form, and practice that assists their growth... But we as gardeners, must beware... for some seeds are the seeds of ruin... and the most iridescent blooms are often the most dangerous

As in the experimental sciences, truth cannot be distinguished from error as long as firm principles have not been established through the rigorous observation of facts.

Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.

I have always attached great importance to the manner in which an experiment is set up and conducted ... the experiment should be set up to open as many windows as possible on the unforeseen.

In this complex world, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going.

Even one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.

The logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only from their mistaking its rules.

The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

The role of science is to be systematic, to be accurate, to be orderly, but it certainly is not to imply that the aggregated, successful hypotheses of the past have the kind of truth that goes into a number system.

Many of the things that have happened in the laboratory have happened in ways it would have been impossible to foresee, but not impossible to plan for in a sense. I do not think Dr. Whitney deliberately plans his serendipity but he is built that way; he has the art-an instinctive way of preparing himself by his curiosity and by his interest in people and in all kinds of things and in nature, so that the things he learns react on one another and thereby accomplish things that would be impossible to foresee and plan.

They have never affirm'd any thing, concerning the cause, till the trial was past: whereas, to do it before, is a most venomous thing in the making of Sciences: for whoever has fix'd on his Cause, before he has experimented; can hardly avoid fitting his Experiment, and his Observations, to his Own Cause, which he had before imagin'd; rather than the Cause to the Truth of the Experiment itself. Referring to experiments of the Aristotelian mode, whereby a preconceived truth would be illustrated merely to convince people of the validity of the original thought.

On their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning. The concept is replaced by the formula, the cause by rules and probability.

In order that the facts obtained by observation and experiment may be capable of being used in furtherance of our exact and solid knowledge, they must be apprehended and analysed according to some Conceptions which, applied for this purpose, give distinct and definite results, such as can be steadily taken hold of and reasoned from.

In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.

Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.

In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared.