Claude Bernard
Overview
 
Claude Bernard was a French physiologist. He was the first to define the term milieu intérieur
Milieu interieur
Milieu intérieur or interior milieu, from the French, milieu intérieur, is a term coined by Claude Bernard to refer to the extra-cellular fluid environment, and its physiological capacity to ensure protective stability for the tissues and organs of multicellular living organisms.-Origin:Claude...

(now known as homeostasis
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...

, a term coined by Walter Bradford Cannon
Walter Bradford Cannon
Walter Bradford Cannon, M.D. was an American physiologist, professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. He coined the term fight or flight response, and he expanded on Claude Bernard's concept of homeostasis...

). Historian of science I. Bernard Cohen
I. Bernard Cohen
I. Bernard Cohen was the Victor S. Thomas Professor of the history of science at Harvard University and the author of many books on the history of science and, in particular, Isaac Newton....

 of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 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.
Bernard was born in 1813 in the village of Saint-Julien
Saint-Julien, Rhône
Saint-Julien is a commune in the Rhône department in eastern France.-References:*...

 near Villefranche-sur-Saône
Villefranche-sur-Saône
Villefranche-sur-Saône is a commune in the Rhône department in eastern France.It lies 1 mile west of the Saône River, and is around north of Lyon...

.
Quotations

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.

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

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

Leçons sur les Phénomènes de la Vie Communs aux Animaux et aux Végétaux

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.

Pensées (1937) (An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine)

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 their 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.

Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.

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

Science repulses the indefinite.

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.

When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.

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.

 
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