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.
Claude BernardRead
Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism.
Interpretation
Living organisms are intricate machines with remarkable abilities driven by complex mechanisms.
In this quote, Claude Bernard emphasizes the extraordinary nature of living organisms, likening them to machines but highlighting their complexity and the delicate systems that enable life. This perspective reflects the intricate arrangements of biological systems and the sophistication of life itself, challenging us to appreciate the marvels of nature and biology.
In practice
In a biology class discussing the nature of life and living systems.
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.
When a physician is called to a patient, he should decide on the diagnosis, then the prognosis, and then the treatment. ... Physicians must know the evolution of the disease, its duration and gravity in order to predict its course and outcome. Here statistics intervene to guide physicians, by teaching them the proportion of mortal cases, and if observation has also shown that the successful and unsuccessful cases can be recognized by certain signs, then the prognosis is more certain.
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.
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.
True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain.
The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
As in biomedical science, pioneering industrial inventions have not been mothered by necessity. Rather, inventions for which there was no commercial use only later became the commercial airplanes, xerography and lasers on which modern society depends.
Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations.
Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.
When it comes to how neuroscience could help the wider public, the worst thing is when we make advances in, say, mindfulness, and then decide that everybody can potentially think their way to curing themselves or develop their own psycho-neuro-immune mechanisms for boosting cancer defenses.
In todayβs vastly expanded scientific enterprise, obsessed with impact factors and competition, we will need much more night science to unveil the many mysteries that remain about the workings of organisms.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.