ABSTRACT
Descartes was in the avant garde with respect to the geometrization of nature, but he was not an advocate of mechanism in its purest form, in the present sense of 'pure'. It is true that Cartesian matter, considered in itself, has nothing but mechanical or geometrical attributes, extension and motion and their modes. Yet the laws of mechanics do not, as it seems, stand to reason on their own, but need to be derived from the activity and immutability of God. God, by an action equivalent to continuous recreation, maintains both matter and the overall quantity of motion and rest 'by his normal participation'. From this principle are derived the laws of motion, described as the 'secondary causes' of particular movements.7
