13 Ivan Pavlov Quotes on Science

Ivan Pavlov quotes on science

1. The Sun-Paul must consider only one thing: what is the relation of this or that external reaction of the animal to the phenomena of the external world?

2. Mankind will possess incalculable advantages and extraordinary control over human behavior when the scientific investigator will be able to subject his fellow men to the same external analysis he would employ for any natural object, and when the human mind will contemplate itself not from within but from without.

3. Learn the ABC of science before you try to ascend to its summit.

4. Learn, compare, collect the facts!

5. After remaking the animal's organism in accordance with our design, which naturally caused more or less damage to the experimental animal, we had to find a modus vivendi for it that would ensure an absolutely normal and long life.

7. As was to be expected, the discovery of the nervous apparatus of the salivary glands immediately impelled physiologists to seek a similar apparatus in other glands lying deeper in the digestive canal.

9. At the same time this is an extremely important practical application of the power of human knowledge, which may also be of immediate use to man, who, due to the implacable fortuities of life, is often mutilated in similar, though more varied ways.

10. But man has still another powerful resource: natural science with its strictly objective methods.

12. Finally, as the digestive canal is a complex system, a series of separate chemical laboratories, I cut the connections between them in order to investigate the course of phenomena in each particular laboratory; thus I resolved the digestive canal into several separate parts.

22. Only by observing this condition would the results of our work be regarded as fully conclusive and as having elucidated the normal course of the phenomena.

25. Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise.

33. Thus, the purposeful relationship of phenomena is based on the specificity of the stimuli, that correspond to similarly specific reactions.

35. While you are experimenting, do not remain content with the surface of things. Don't become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.