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''The World'', also called ''Treatise on the Light'' (French title: ''Traité du monde et de la lumière''), is a book by René Descartes (1596–1650). Written between 1629 and 1633, it contains a nearly complete version of his philosophy, from method, to metaphysics, to physics and biology. Descartes espoused mechanical philosophy, a form of natural philosophy popular in the 17th century. He thought everything physical in the universe to be made of tiny "corpuscles" of matter. Corpuscularianism is closely related to atomism. The main difference was that Descartes maintained that there could be no vacuum, and all matter was constantly swirling to prevent a void as corpuscles moved through other matter. ''The World'' presents a corpuscularian cosmology in which swirling vortices explain, among other phenomena, the creation of our solar system and the circular motion of planets around the Sun. ''The World'' rests on the heliocentric view, first explicated in Western Europe by Copernicus. Descartes delayed the book's release upon news of the Roman Inquisition's conviction of Galileo for "suspicion of heresy" and sentencing to house arrest. Descartes discussed his work on the book, and his decision not to release it, in letters with another philosopher, Marin Mersenne. Some material from ''The World'' was revised for publication as ''Principia philosophiae'' or ''Principles of Philosophy'' (1644), a Latin textbook at first intended by Descartes to replace the Aristotelian textbooks then used in universities. In the ''Principles'' the heliocentric tone was softened slightly with a relativist frame of reference. The last chapter of ''The World'' was published separately as ''De Homine'' (''On Man'') in 1662. The rest of ''The World'' was finally published in 1664, and the entire text in 1677. == The void and particles in nature == Before Descartes begins to describe his theories in physics, he introduces the reader to the idea that there is no relationship between our sensations and what creates these sensations, thereby casting doubt on the Aristotelian belief that such a relationship existed. Next he describes how fire is capable of breaking wood apart into its minuscule parts through the rapid motion of the particles of fire within the flames. This rapid motion of particles is what gives fire its heat, since Descartes claims heat is nothing more than just the motion of particles, and what causes it to produce light. According to Descartes, the motion, or agitation, of these particles is what gives substances their properties (i.e. their fluidity and hardness). Fire is the most fluid and has enough energy to render most other bodies fluid whereas the particles of air lack the force necessary to do the same. Hard bodies have particles that are all equally hard to separate from the whole. Based on his observations of how resistant nature is to a vacuum, Descartes deduced that all particles in nature are packed together such that there is no void or empty space in nature (however, Descartes makes it clear that he does not claim that a void cannot exist in nature, since he lacks the observations necessary to say this with certainty). Descartes describes substances as consisting only of three elementary elements: fire, air and earth, from which the properties of any substance can be characterized by its composition of these elements, the size and arrangement of the particles in the substance, and the motion of its particles. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The World (Descartes)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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