ABSTRACT
The difficulties in which the Cartesian doctrine was involved in respect of place and motion had become more evident. To Newton, More's theory by contrast provided what was requisite for the science of physics as the science of bodies in motion. Further, and beyond what More had appreciated, Newton saw that this was the basis which was requisite for the science of physics as it had increasingly become, namely the mathematical analysis of the motion of bodies. Bodies are measurable because of the mathematical character they derive by their occupation of places in the infinite mathematical extension. Thus in Newton's doctrine time and space are ontologically derivative from the presence of God: 'by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space'. Newton's doctrine and its implications can now most conveniently be elaborated by a contrast with the positions of Giordano Bruno and Descartes.
