  Pascal did not publish an explicit theory of knowledge or philosophy of science in any single text. One can infer from disparate works—such as his essays on the vacuum (written during the late 1640s), De l'esprit géométrique (1655), and the Entretien avec M. de Sacy (published posthumously)—that he had conflicting intuitions about natural knowledge, although they all recognise the special role of religious belief. The Provincial Letters provide a statement of his general overview: “How do we learn the truth about facts?  That will be from our eyes … which are the appropriate judges of fact, as reason is of natural and intelligible things, and the faith is of things that are supernatural and revealed” (I, 810). ‘The faith’ is not simply any religious faith; it is the specific kind of belief to which Roman Catholics had access as a gift from God. Apart from faith, which is directed to revealed truths and the supernatural world, Pascal identified ‘experience and reason’ (I, 454) as the only ways of acquiring knowledge of the natural world.