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Descartes maintained that our senses do not inform us of the mechanical world as it is, but provide us with sensations which are mere signs of their objective cause. Only extended matter and motion exist apart from our minds. Secondary qualities, such as colors, are created in our minds in response to mechanical stimuli. [[CiteRef::Clarke (1992)]] Descartes completed a manuscript that was to be a comprehensive expression of his mechanical natural philosophy, called ''The World''. He withdrew his plans to publish it upon learning of the condemnation of Galileo in Rome in 1633. The work never appeared during his lifetime, but two major fragments, the ''Treatise on Light'', and the ''Treatise on Man'' were published posthumously. The first dealt with physics, and the second put forward a theory of physiology, nervous system function, and the mind/brain relationship. [[CiteRef::Garber (1992)]][[CiteRef::Descartes (2003)]]

The overthrow of the Aristotelian tradition, even in places where Cartesianism was rejected and the community maintained Aristotelianism, forced the academic community in Europe to reconsider and defend the Aristotelian mosaic in ways that had never before been encountered. Though the dialectical approach to scholarship throughout the medieval period saw scholars constantly questioning various aspects of the Aristotelian worldview, Descartes’ wholesale rejection of huge swaths of the mosaic and its central concepts were unprecedented. Theories like hylomorphism, which had been a given in the mosaic of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and had endured through multitudes of adjustments, reconciliations and dialectic criticism had never before faced complete overhaul as Descartes threatened. Although Descartes theories would eventually be supplanted by those of Newton, he made the critical first steps to replacing the Aristotelian-scholastic mosaic.[[CiteRef::Hatfield (2016)]]