From John Henry Newman's Idea of the University (3, Section 2):
The object of all science is truth;—the pure sciences proceed to their enunciations from principles which the intellect discerns by a natural light, and by a process recognized by natural reason; and the experimental sciences investigate facts by methods of analysis or by ingenious expedients, ultimately resolvable into instruments of thought equally native to the human mind. If then we may assume that there is an objective truth, and that the constitution of the human mind is in correspondence with it, and acts truly when it acts according to its own laws; if we may assume that God made us, and that what He made is good, and that no action from and according to nature can in itself be evil; it will follow that, so long as it is man who is the geometrician, or natural philosopher, or mechanic, or critic, no matter what man he be, Hindoo, Mahometan, or infidel, his conclusions within his own science, according to the laws of that science, are unquestionable, and not to be suspected by Catholics, unless Catholics may legitimately be jealous of fact and truth, of divine principles and divine creations.
Now what I like about this, is his assumption that, since God created all objective reality in our universe, and since this same God created us with the purpose of actually and meaningfully engaging with that objective reality in which we find ourselves (exercise "dominion"), then it can be accepted as a fundamental premise that what we perceive with our five senses indeed correlates with what is actually there, with the object perceived. This could be called a "common sense" conclusion. But it is actually a conclusion based upon the implications of a reading of Holy Scripture. Now if one wants to deny that divine inspiration has ever taken place, and that the Bible is not God's communication to us of real truth via human agents, then one is left with the agnostic belief about human knowledge with which the philosophers have left us. The Christian reply, however, is that Jesus rose from the dead, proving he was divine, and that his opinion of the trustworthiness of Holy Writ is to be received and believed, simply because he could not have lied about it. As St. Paul relates, everything hangs on the resurrection of Jesus - even our understanding of the human endeavour called science.
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