“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.”

Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when th…" by Claude Bernard?
Claude Bernard photo
Claude Bernard 21
French physiologist 1813–1878

Related quotes

Jane Roberts photo

“When we believe that science or religion "has the truth," we stop our speculations. While still referring to the theory of evolution, science accepts it as a fact, about existence, and therefore any speculation that threatens that theory becomes almost heretical.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 58
Context: When we believe that science or religion "has the truth," we stop our speculations. While still referring to the theory of evolution, science accepts it as a fact, about existence, and therefore any speculation that threatens that theory becomes almost heretical. So often it seems that there is no other choice in the matter of man's origin than a meaningless universe and an earth populated by creatures who fight for survival, or a universe created by Christianity's objectified God. And to me, at least, the Eastern religions present no acceptable answers, either.

Aron Ra photo
Ronald David Laing photo

“Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory.”

Ch. 1 : Experience as evidence http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/laing.htm
The Politics of Experience (1967)
Context: Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".
We can see other people's behaviour, but not their experience. This has led some people to insist that psychology has nothing to do with the other person's experience, but only with his behaviour.
The other person's behaviour is an experience of mine. My behaviour is an experience of the other. The task of social phenomenology is to relate my experience of the other's behaviour to the other's experience of my behaviour. Its study is the relation between experience and experience: its true field is inter-experience.

Samuel McChord Crothers photo

“We sometimes speak of stubborn facts. Nonsense! A fact is a mere babe when compared with a stubborn theory.”

Samuel McChord Crothers (1857–1927) American minister

Source: The Gentle Reader (1903), p. 277

Herbert Spencer photo

“Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

The Development Hypothesis (1852)
Context: Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none.

William James photo

“As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"The Will to Believe" p. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=Moqh7ktHaJEC&pg=PA10
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Gustave Flaubert photo

“As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

William James, in The Will to Believe (1897)
Misattributed

Herbert Marcuse photo

Related topics