ABSTRACT
In the Meditations, Descartes developed a theory of sense knowledge in which the mind plays an active role. Indeed, only the mind’s activity would be able to organize the fragmentary data the senses supply, yielding the experience of the external world. This theory conflicts with the purely physiological account of sense experience developed in the Traité de l’homme. The conflict between the two theories points out the tension between science and its metaphysical foundations in Descartes’ thought.
