ABSTRACT
The modern philosophical field of epistemology arose from the study of the mind’s powers as instruments for knowing. In the Aristotelian and early-modern contexts, the assignment of “faculties” or “powers” to the mind, such as the sensitive and intellectual powers, was not an attempt to explain the ability to sense or to understand; it was part of an effort to catalogue and describe the general cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals and human beings. Descartes started his intellectual career in 1618–1619, working on problems in mathematics and in “mathematical physics”. Nonhuman animals exhibit a variety of behaviors. Their sense organs and motor apparatus allow them to seek nutrients, navigate the local terrain, and avoid bodily harms. Descartes was greatly interested in developing physiological hypotheses to account for animal and human behavior. The rationalist philosophers, as was typical of those promulgating the new science of nature, were deeply interested in the theory of the senses and the status of sensory qualities.
