Great Throughts Treasury

"The defects of the day: no respect for authority; devaluation of all existing reputations. It is the pride of youth and the contempt for the fathers, for the ancients in all the sciences. This is a bad spirit, because we are often only dwarfs standing on their shoulders. They should without doubt not be worshipped, but be known and appreciated."

"The desire formulates the need; the hypothesis is the need for fact."

"The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science."

"The eloquence of a scientist is clarity; scientific truth is always more luminous when its beauty is unadorned than when it is tricked out in the embellishments with which our imagination would seek to clothe it."

"The experiment is complete only after the counterproof, just as analysis is never complete except after synthesis. In physiology we cannot make a synthesis, but we can carry out the control experiment - or counterproof."

"The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for free and independent life: the mechanism that makes it possible is that which assured the maintenance, with the internal environment, of all the conditions necessary for the life of the elements."

"The better educated we are and the more acquired information we have, the better prepared shall we find our minds for making great and fruitful discoveries."

"The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will never understand what he finds."

"The fact that knowledge endlessly recedes as the investigator is about to grasp it is what constitutes at the same time his torment and happiness."

"The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units."

"The general or mineral world is made for all beings, and in turn each being has below him beings which are made for him, but does he have the feeling that he has something above him, for which he is made?"

"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."

"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."

"The life of an organism can only continue through the birth of primitive or embryonic cells which mature little by little and then die at a given moment. As it is in organisms, so it is with people. Civilization is essentially a progression towards death. The upper classes do not lose their status. It is necessary that primitive, even barbaric men become civilized and ascend to join them. If this renewal fails to occur, society dies, as would an organism deprived of cellular renewal."

"The man of genius is an absurd person, who pushes reasoning to the limit and makes a system. I could be a man of genius, but I do not wish to be: I prefer to be a reasonable man."

"The mental never influences the physical. It is always the physical that modifies the mental, and when we think that the mind is diseased, it is always an illusion."

"The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive."

"The opinions of other people are a stimulus to us, which arouses others (opinions) in us. It is essentially in this way that they (other people) serve us. ."

"The physiologist is not a man of the world, he is a scientist, a man caught and absorbed by a scientific idea that he pursues; he no longer hears the cries of the animals, no longer sees the flowing blood, he sees only his idea: organisms that hide from him problems that he wants to discover. He doesn't feel that he is in a horrible carnage; under the influence of a scientific idea, he pursues with delight a nervous filament inside stinking and livid flesh that for any other person would be an object of disgust and horror."

"The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen."

"The first entirely vital action, so termed because it is not effected outside the influence of life, consists in the creation of the glycogenic material in the living hepatic tissue. The second entirely chemical action, which can be effected outside the influence of life, consists in the transformation of the glycogenic material into sugar by means of a ferment."

"The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel."

"The investigator should have a robust faith - and yet not believe."

"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."

"The terrain is everything; the germ is nothing."

"The true worth of a researcher lies in pursuing what he did not seek in his experiment as well as what he sought."

"The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek."

"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."

"There are people who seek to find the truth, but there are those who, above all, seek to uncover the errors of their contemporaries."

"The origin of an original work is always the pursuit of a fact which does not fit into accepted ideas."

"Theories are only verified 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."

"There are some doctors who declare themselves against experimentation, and only favour observation. This is erroneous thinking, for experimentation cannot exist without observation. Experiment is only provoked observation, carried further with the aid of instruments and other means of investigation - but basically still observation."

"There are those who believe that criticism consists in attaching oneself to a man, and taking away from him all that he has been able to do of value."

"They 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."

"Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery."

"Those who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries, but they also make very poor observations."

"To be worthy of the name, an experimenter must be at once theorist and practitioner. While he must completely master the art of establishing experimental facts, which are the materials of science, he must also clearly understand the scientific principles which guide his reasoning through the varied experimental study of natural phenomena. We cannot separate these two things: head and hand. An able hand, without a head to direct it, is a blind tool; the head is powerless without its executive hand."

"Today no one says any longer 'it is good; that is fine'. No one believes in himself. He says it will sell - or it will not sell."

"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."

"True science teaches us to doubt and to abstain from ignorance."

"We achieve more than we know. We know more than we understand. We understand more than we can explain."

"True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain."

"Two things are necessary - science and art, reason and emotion."

"We must keep our freedom of mind,... and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible."

"We can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown."

"We must not deceive ourselves: morals do not forbid making experiments on one's neighbour or one's self; in everyday life, men do nothing but experiment on one another."

"We must alter theory to adapt it to nature, but not nature to adapt it to theory.?"

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

"We see, then, that the elements of the scientific method are interrelated. Facts are necessary materials; but their working up by experimental reasoning, i.e., by theory, is what establishes and really builds up science. Ideas, given form by facts, embody science. A scientific hypothesis is merely a scientific idea, preconceived or previsioned. A theory is merely a scientific idea controlled by experiment. Reasoning merely gives a form to our ideas, so that everything, first and last, leads back to an idea. The idea is what establishes, as we shall see, the starting point or the primum movens of all scientific reasoning, and it is also the goal in the mind's aspiration toward the unknown."

"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."