[Claude Bernard: a personal scientific fame that he probably would have not appreciated].
Claude Bernard has been a great medical physiologist of the ninenteenth century, who was able to convince biologists and physicians that the "experimental method" can and must be applied to the phenomena of living matter, as it is applied in physics and chemistry. With the concept of the "universality of the experimental method", the Modern Experimental Medicine begun to exist. However, C. Bernard deserves of further honor, having identified and promulgated a law of the living matter, i.e., the law concerning the "constancy of the interior biological environment". Such a law was later consacrated in 1929 by G.W. Cannon with the term "homeostasis". The homeostatic conception of biological functions had a great epistemological impact in the history of biology and medicine. As a matter of fact, all the modern biologists and physicians are today educated at the light of the homeostatic systems. Accordingly, C. Bernard is celebrated in his fame as the tutor of scientific medicine. Reading, however, what C. Bernard has written on the personalism and the eponimy of scientific ideas, one is prone to think that he would have not appreciated the dogmatic exaltation, the cult of his ideas on the biological constancy. He was aware that "... it is a fundamental rule in science to modify and change the ideas going on". And again "... But, since these ideas are not immutable verities, one must be ready to abandon and modify them when they cease to represent the reality". And again "The systems and doctrines are personal and pretend to be immortal and to preserve their personality. The experimental method, however, is impersonal; it zeroes the individuality and sacrifices the particular ideas of the a single person in favor of a general verity, which is established by means of the experimental criterion". And again "The great persons have never been promoters of absolute ed eternal verities in experimental sciences". And again "Any person who made the science to proceed, never pretended to define the limits; this person is destined to be surpassed and left apart by the progress of the future generations". And again "One of the most important obstacle that is encountered by humans along the course of knowledge is represented by the tendency of human acquisitions to be transformed into systems". With the discovery of chaos and biological systems in living matter, the law of homeostasis must be now revised.
Cugini
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Dipartimento di Scienze Cliniche, Università di Roma La Sapienza, Roma, Italia.
D001695:Biology; D005602:France; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006706:Homeostasis; D010827:Physiology / Q000266:history