It tells us about the essences of things, which the senses do not. Nonetheless, Descartes holds that the senses have a place in our scientific attempts to understand the world. Descartes also holds that various truths can only be determined by faith. John Locke also, seeks to determine the limits of human understanding, what we can know and why, what role the senses and reason play, and what can only be believed or taken as an article of faith. For Locke, the senses and reflection provide the materials on which reason works.
Faith operates beyond reason.
Explanations and Methods Another strand which brought about the intense interest in knowledge was the extraordinary advances which were made during this period in mathematics and natural philosophy or science as we now call it. European mathematicians were finally able to surpass the results of the Greek mathematicians of antiquity such as Euclid and Archimedes. Similarly natural philosophers were coming to reject Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic cosmology and geography. With the work of Copernicus, Brahe, Galileo and Kepler, astronomy and physics were put on a new footing. Surely, these extraordinary advances represented real knowledge.