‘What exists’ and ‘what it is possible for us to know about what exists’ are two very separate issues. All that we can know of the external world is mediated through our senses (and helpful devices, such as microscopes and telescopes). But what if our senses deceive us all the time, rather than just in some cases like mirages and converging railroad tracks? What if the organism seen under a microscope is really just an artifact of the lens, and not really there? The 17th century philosopher, Descartes, used radical epistemological doubt to tear philosophy and science down to its foundation with the aim of building it back up again from a starting point of certainty. This left, of course, the problem of trying to discover that one indubitable foundational principle on which we could rest assured. Since he was thinking of these things, he reasoned that there had to be a thinking-thing there to do all that thinking - himself! So, his foundational belief was in his own existence. The proposition he found indubitable, on which his entire objective theory of knowledge rests, is his famous quote, "I think, therefore I am." Could he possibly be wrong about knowing that?
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