Abstract

The subject of this thesis is the scientific work of Descartes, and in particular the two treatises Le Monde and L'Homme written in the early 1630s, before the publication of the Discours de la Methode and the Essais in 1637. I examine the theory of sense and imagination in these works, and its role in the legitimation of Cartesian science. Reasoning about sense and imagination was governed by the concept of representation, an interrelated ensemble of modes of reasoning about the causal origin of signs, the human or divine agency and purpose responsible for their institution, and the correlation of the differences among signs in one system of representation with the differences among signs in other systems. ;This description of Cartesian mechanistic accounts of sense and imagination is applied to an examination of the fate of the epistemological project of the Regulae. I show that, as the Cartesian theory was developed, the use of the senses, and thus too the use of experiences in science, became problematic. First, because any resemblance between sensations and their objects was held to be merely fortuitous. Hence the sensation need not share any properties with its object, and therefore provides no direct access to it. Second, because the purpose of the senses is not to arrive at certain knowledge but to guide us toward those actions which under normal circumstances will best preserve the organism. I show how the adoption of these views makes untenable the role for sense and imagination in science that had been envisioned for them in the Regulae. In conclusion I examine one response to the failure of the early project: the analogy of decipherment by which Descartes explains the role of experiences in his science