True Motion and the Infinite Material Universe

²¹ The extension of the world is indefinite

This world or the whole (universitas) of corporeal substance, is extended without limit.

Wherever we fix a limit, we still not only imagine beyond it spaces indefinitely extended, but perceive these to be truly imaginable, in other words, to be in reality such as we imagine them.

In this way, they contain in them corporeal substance indefinitely extended. This is because the idea of extension which we conceive in any space whatever is plainly identical with the idea of corporeal substance.

²² It also follows that the matter of the heavens and earth is the same, and that there cannot be a plurality of worlds.

The earth and heavens are made of the same matter. Although there were an infinity of worlds*, they would all be composed of this matter.

*Superphysics note: The ‘worlds’ here would mean material galaxies

It follows that a plurality of worlds is impossible. This is because we clearly conceive that the matter (whose nature consists only in its being an extended substance) already totally occupies all the imaginable spaces where these other worlds could alone be.

We cannot find in ourselves the idea of any other matter.

²³ All the variety of matter, or the diversity of its forms, depends on motion.

There is therefore just one kind of matter in the whole universe. This we know only by its being extended.

All the properties we distinctly perceive to belong to it are reducible to its capacity of being divided and moved according to its parts.

Accordingly, it is capable of all those affections which we perceive can arise from the motion of its parts.

This is because the partition of matter in thought makes no change in it. But all variation of it, or diversity of form, depends on motion.

The philosophers even seem universally to have observed this. They said that:

• nature was the principle of motion and rest
• ’nature’ meant how all corporeal things become such as they are found in experience.

²⁴ What is motion?

There is only local motion*.

*Superphysics Note: Descartes’ classical locality is totally different from modern locality which is really Einstein locality. Classical Locality is a philosphical concept applied to Physics. It asserts that there is is no void – things affect each other through an immaterial medium called the aether. Einstein Locality is a sophistical concept arising from Einstein’s invention of a material spacetime that limits everything to the speed of light. We assert that the Bell Theorem totally debunks Einstein’s Relativity which imposes Einstein’s Locality (spacetime fabric) and Realism (hidden variables). The successful tests of General Relativity, much applauded by Physicists, are merely tests of equipment.

Ordinary motion is the action by which a body passes from one place to another.

The same thing may change but not to change place at the same time.

The same thing is at the same time moved and not moved.

For example, a person seated in a vessel which is setting sail, thinks he is in motion if he look to the shore and consider it as fixed.

But he is not in motion if he regarded the ship itself, among the parts of which he preserves always the same situation.

We are accustomed to suppose that:

• there is no motion without action
• in rest, there is the cessation of action

The person thus seated is more properly said to be at rest than in motion, seeing he is not conscious of being in action.*

*Superphysics Note: This destroys the assertion of General Relativity that everything is in motion.

²⁵ What is true motion?

True motion is THE TRANSPORTING OF ONE PART OF MATTER OR OF ONE BODY FROM THE VICINITY OF THOSE BODIES THAT ARE IN IMMEDIATE CONTACT WITH IT, OR WHICH WE REGARD AS AT REST, to the vicinity of other bodies.

‘A body as a part of matter’ means all that is transferred together, although it is perhaps composed of several parts, which in themselves have other motions.

It is the transporting and not the force or action which transports.

• This is to emphasize that motion is always in the movable thing, not in that which moves.
• I emphasize this because we are not accustomed to distinguish these two things with sufficient accuracy.

It is a mode of the movable thing, and not a substance, just as shape is a property of the thing shaped, and repose is a property of that which is at rest.